Herbert Hoover (1874–1964,) fully Herbert Clark Hoover, was an American Republican political leader who 31st president of the U.S. 1929–33. As president, he was faced with the long-term problems of the Depression. He held office during the onset of the Great Depression.
Born in West Branch, Iowa, Hoover trained in mining engineering at Stanford University. He worked in this field in the U.S., Australia, and China and founded his own successful mining firm in 1908. He led the Commission for Relief in Belgium, served as the U.S. Food Administration director, and served as the third U.S. Secretary of Commerce. His leadership made him a popular public figure and heralded his political career.
The Great Depression, beginning with the stock market crash in October 1929, overshadowed President Hoover’s administration. He demanded private relief rather than large-scale government programs. His popularity plummeted, and the shantytowns that sprang up around the country were called Hoovervilles after him.
Franklin D Roosevelt defeated Hoover in 1932. He retired to private life until World War II, when he organized civilian relief operations in Europe. He later headed the Hoover Commissions (1947–49, 1953–55,) which studied the executive branch of government and suggested many administrative and policy reforms later adopted.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Herbert Hoover
No public man can be a little crooked. There is no such thing as a no-man’s-land between honesty and dishonesty.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Honesty
Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Procrastination, Words, Inaction, Idealism, Ideals, Getting Going
Peace is not made at the council table or by treaties, but in the hearts of men.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Peace
The glory of the nation rests in the character of her men. And character comes from boyhood. Thus every boy is a challenge to his elders. It is for them that we must win the war-it is for them that we must make a just and lasting peace. For the world of tomorrow, about which all of us are dreaming and planning, will be carried forward by the boys of today.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Children
You convey too great a compliment when you say that I have earned the right to the presidential nomination. No man can establish such an obligation upon any part of the American people. My country owes me no debt. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope. My whole life has taught me what America means. I am indebted to my country beyond any human power to repay.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Country, Blessings, Hope, Gratitude, Patriotism
All progress and growth is a matter of change, but change must be growth within our social and government concepts if it should not destroy them.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Progress
Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Honor
In America today we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than in any land. The poorhouse has vanished from amongst us.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: The Poor, Poverty
The Lord does not deduct from the hours of man those spent in fishing.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Sports
Honest differences of views and honest debate are not disunity. They are the vital process of policy-making among free men.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Opinions, Unity
Children are our most valuable natural resource.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Children
We have not yet reached the goal but.. we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty shall be banished from this nation.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Poverty, The Poor
The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Progress
If America is to be run by the people, it is the people who must think. And we do not need to put on sackcloth and ashes to think. Nor should our minds work like a sundial which records only sunshine. Our thinking must square against some lessons of history, some principles of government and morals, if we would preserve the rights and dignity of men to which this nation is dedicated.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: America
America – a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Experiment
All men are equal before fish.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Equality
The future of nations cannot be frozen … cannot be foreseen. It we are going to accomplish anything in our time we must approach our problem in the knowledge that there is nothing rigid or immutable in human affairs. History is a story of growth, decay and change. If no provision, no allowance is made for change by peaceful means, it will come anyway-and with violence.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: History
About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Opportunity, Success & Failure
Once upon a time my opponents honored me as possessing the fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a worldwide depression all by myself.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Economy
It is those moral and spiritual qualities which rise alone in free men, which will fulfill the meaning of the word American. And with them will come centuries of further greatness to our country.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: America
In the great mass of our people there are plenty individuals of intelligence from among whom leadership can be recruited.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Intelligence, Leadership, Leaders
Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Youth
Governments know that the life of the world cannot be saved if the soul of the world is allowed to be lost.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Soul
Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body, the producers and consumers themselves.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Law, Economy
Liberty is a thing of the spirit-to be free to worship, to think, to hold opinions, and to speak without fear-free to challenge wrong and oppression with surety of justice.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Liberty
Where there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Government
A splendid storehouse of integrity and freedom has been bequeathed to us by our forefathers. In this day of confusion, of peril to liberty, our high duty is to see that this storehouse is not robbed of its contents.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Freedom
Next to religion, baseball has furnished a greater impact on American life than any other institution
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Baseball
Thus the scene of the tragedy of Liberty world over must be suffering and discontent among the people. The drama moves swiftly in a torrent of words in which real purposes are disguised in portrayals of Utopia; idealism without realism; slogans, phrases and statements destructive to confidence in existing institutions; demands for violent action against slowly curable ills; unfair representation that sporadic wickedness is the system itself; searing prejudice against the former order; dismay and panic in the economic organization which feeds on its own despair. Emotions rise above reason. The man on horseback, ascending triumphantly to office on the steps of constitutional process, demands and threatens the parliament into the delegation of its sacred power. Then follows consolidation of authority through powerful propaganda in the pay of the state to transform the mentality of the people. Resentment of criticism, denunciation of all opposition, moral terrorization, all follow in sequence. The last scene is the suppression of freedom. Liberty dies of the water from her own well- free speech- poisoned by untruth. In the Epilogue the dreams of those who saw Utopia are shattered and the people find they are marching backward toward the Middle Ages- as regimented men.
—Herbert Hoover
Topics: Liberty
Let me remind you that credit is the lifeblood of business, the lifeblood of prices and jobs.
—Herbert Hoover
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Calvin Coolidge American Head of State
Charles G. Dawes American Diplomat, Politician
Warren G. Harding American Head of State
Richard Nixon American Head of State
Ronald Reagan American Head of State
George H. W. Bush American Head of State
Jimmy Carter American Head of State
Franklin D. Roosevelt American Head of State
Dwight D. Eisenhower American Head of State
Theodore Roosevelt American Head of State