Eugene McCarthy

“Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.”

“Have you ever tried to split sawdust?”

“The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.”

“The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.”

“It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.”

“Remember that the worst accidents occur in the middle of the road.”

“There is only one thing to do — take it to the country!”

“We do not need presidents who are bigger than the country, but rather ones who speak for it and support it.”

“I'm kind of an accidental instrument, really, through which I hope that the judgment and the will of this nation can be expressed.”

“The maple tree that nightBecause its time had come.”

“Now it is certain.With the mind's winnowed learning.”

“The glove has been thrown to the ground,A line for one word.”

“"Broken things are powerful."The last shot from the brittle bow is truest.”

“I have left Act I, for involutionI cannot write Act III.”