Quotes from Herman E. Talmadge

I remember Dick Russell used to say to beware of any man who will demagogue behind closed doors.

Down South we've always believed that if a man had intellectual abilities, they would show through on their own without his having to brag about them.

For some reason, a lot of folks seem to think that until very recently every Southern politician would go home at night, wait for it to get dark, take a white sheet out of his closet, and then go tearing around the countryside, burning crosses and raising hell.

By the time Papa came on the scene, Georgia had regained self-government and was bound and determined to keep it, despite the best efforts of Yankee imperialists who liked nothing better than to tell other folks how to live their lives.

The problem with trying to leave politics is that once it gets in your blood, it can be like a narcotic. You know that it's no good for you, even that it's killing you, but you just can't leave it alone.

Politics is an all-consuming mistress that can destroy your family life, warp your personality, and wreck your health.

Blacks and whites in the South have had to learn to live together in a new way. Up north, they're getting acquainted for the first time.

Many men have a passion for food or drink or sex or making money. For Lyndon [Johnson] it was politics. It was his natural element, what literally kept him alive.

To this day it's hard to believe that a politician as smart as Dick Nixon could have allowed something that stupid to happen. He had the most ability of any of the presidents I knew.

I've always felt that the best way to get rid of any enemy is to make a friend of him. It's a policy that has stood me well in my years in public life.

Politicians who are not contemplating early retirement usually find survival more attractive than martyrdom.

It's a funny thing about roads, though. You can hardly ever make them pay off. Say you've got ten roads that need paving, and you can only pave nine. The folks on that nine that you pave aren't grateful because they figure they've got it coming. But those on that one you don't will never forgive you.

Even though the voters were overwhelmingly in favor of the three-dollar tag, the highway department wasn't about to get off the public tit without putting up a fight.

When I see some over-dressed yuppie wearing suspenders today, I just smile and think that in some things Papa was ahead of his time.

They may buy victory more discreetly in this day and age, but then the ante is a hell of a lot higher.

It's fairly easy to hate a racial or ethnic group in the abstract, but it's a different story when you start dealing with individuals.

Living in New York City was worse than being in combat. People were herded about like cattle and always seemed in a godawful rush to get on the subway. I think pushing old ladies out of the way was the most fun those people had during the course of an average day

When your appeal depends on an image, you have nothing to fall back on when the image is gone.

From 1948 on, the Democratic Party has moved to the left politically and to the north geographically.