Tom Harkin Quotes

You can’t set aside … values in the name of political expediency.

No matter how healthy a man's morals may be when he enters the White House, he comes out again with a pock-marked soul.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And Vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But Conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'

I have to do what's right.

That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

The devil is compromise.

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Leadership is about doing what you know is right - even when a growing din of voices around you is trying to convince you to accept what you know to be wrong.

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

Both politicians and journalists face situations which strain their honesty and humanity. My opinion is that politicians on the average stand up somewhat better than journalists.

Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

In politics, the people I most despise are those who have no values.

My feeling is that the hero has now been defined by phrases like the odious one that we were all raised with - crimes does not pay. Of course it pays, you schmuck. That's not why we don't do it. We don't do it because it is wrong.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

I came into office to do what was correct, not to see what was politically expedient to get re-elected.

I may have hurt some people along the way, but I would like to be seen as somebody who has done his best to do the right thing for any situation and not compromised.