SPIRO AGNEW QUOTES
39th Vice President of the United States (1918-1996)
In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.
SPIRO AGNEW
speech in San Diego, California, Sep. 11, 1970
Education is being redefined at the demand of the uneducated to suit the ideas of the uneducated. The student now goes to college to proclaim, rather than to learn.
SPIRO AGNEW
speech in Houston, Texas, May 22, 1970
I am not asking for government censorship or any other kind of censorship. I am asking whether a kind of censorship already exists when the news that forty million Americans receive each night is determined by a handful of men responsible only to their corporate employers and filtered through a handful of commentators who admit to their own set of biases.
SPIRO AGNEW
speech the Midwest Republican Regional Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, Nov. 13, 1969
In the networks' endless pursuit of controversy, we should ask what is the end value ... to enlighten or to profit? What is the end result ... to inform or to confuse? How does the ongoing exploration for more action, more excitements, more drama, serve our national search for internal peace and stability.
SPIRO AGNEW
speech the Midwest Republican Regional Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, Nov. 13, 1969
Three things have been difficult to tame: the oceans, fools and women. We may soon be able to tame the oceans; fools and women will take a little longer.
SPIRO AGNEW
Ms. Magazine, 1982
A narrow and distorted picture of America often emerges from the televised news. A single dramatic piece of the mosaic becomes, in the minds of millions, the entire picture.
SPIRO AGNEW
speech the Midwest Republican Regional Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, Nov. 13, 1969
There are people in our society who should be separated and discarded.
SPIRO AGNEW
The Washington Post, Jul. 2, 1970
Perhaps the place to start looking for a credibility gap is not in the offices of the Government in Washington but in the studios of the networks in New York!
SPIRO AGNEW
speech the Midwest Republican Regional Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, Nov. 13, 1969
Some newspapers are fit only to line the bottom of bird cages.
SPIRO AGNEW
The New York Times Book Review, 1970
A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as "intellectuals".
SPIRO AGNEW
speech in Houston, Texas, May 22, 1970
I apologize for lying to you. I promise I won't deceive you except in matters of this sort.
SPIRO AGNEW
Esquire Magazine, 1971
The criminal left is interested in power. It is not interested in promoting the renewal and reforms that make democracy work; it is interested in promoting those collisions and conflict that tear democracy apart.
SPIRO AGNEW
speech at Florida Republican dinner in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Apr. 28, 1970
Freedom of speech is useless without freedom of thought.
SPIRO AGNEW
speech, Dec. 3, 1969
Ultraliberalism today translates into a whimpering isolationism in foreign policy, a mulish obstructionism in domestic policy.
SPIRO AGNEW
speech in Springfield, Illinois, Sep. 10, 1970
The American people should be made aware of the trend toward monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power over public opinion in fewer and fewer hands.
SPIRO AGNEW
attributed, Don't Blame the People: How the News Media Uses Bias, Distortion, and Censorship to Manipulate Public Opinion
You can't hit my team in the groin and expect me to smile about it.
SPIRO AGNEW
The New York Times Book Review, 1970
A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice, a caustic remark dropped in the middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of a governmental policy.
SPIRO AGNEW
speech the Midwest Republican Regional Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, Nov. 13, 1969
The era of appeasement must come to an end. The political and social demands that dissidents are making of the universities do not flow from sound basic educational criteria, but from strategic considerations on how to radicalize the student body, polarize the campus and extend the privileged enclaves of student power.
SPIRO AGNEW
speech at Republican dinner in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Apr. 28, 1970
An intellectual is a man who doesn't know how to park a bike.
SPIRO AGNEW
attributed, The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations
I think it's one of the tendencies of the liberal community to feel that every person in a nation of over 200 million can be made into a productive citizen. I'm realist enough to believe this can't be. We're always going to have our prisons, we're always going to have our places of preventative detention for psychopaths, and we're always going to have a certain number of people in our community who have no desire to achieve or who have no desire to even fit in an amicable way with the rest of society. And these people should be separated from the community, not in a callous way but they should be separated as far as any idea that their opinions shall have any effect on the course we follow.
SPIRO AGNEW
The Washington Post, Jul. 2, 1970