Huey Long(1893-1935) was a notorious American politician. He served as the 40th Governor of Louisiana(1928-1932) and then Senator of the US until his assassination in 1935.
A strong supporter of wealth redistribution and a vocal critic of Roosevelt’s “New Deal“.
Huey Long’s alternative, the famous “Share our wealth” political program gained widespread popularity and became a political movement, because of its strong support for wealth redistribution and other popular leftist/social ideas and measures.
How should Huey Long be remembered in history? A demagogue, a populist, or a progressive/reformer? What better way to answer this question than to read a list of Huey Long quotes to find out more about his political views?
I. Huey Long Quotes about Share our Wealth program
- “There is only one way to save our people; only one way to save America. How? Pull down wealth from the top and spread wealth at the bottom; free people of these debts they owe; God told just exactly how to do it all.” – Huey Long
2. “God called: “Come to my feast.”But what happened? Rockefeller, Morgan, and their crowd stepped up and took enough for 120,000,000 people and left only enough for 5,000,000 for all the other 125,000,000 to eat” – Huey Long
3. “The great wealth on top of the ground and beneath the ground must be shared with the people who live on the ground” – Huey Long
4. “The organized 600 families who control the wealth of America have been able to keep 125,000,000 people in bondage” – Huey Long
5. “We have got everything our people need…why not let all have their fill and lie down in the ease and comfort God has given us.” – Huey Long
6. “Unless we provide for redistribution of wealth in this country, the country is doomed.” – Huey Long
7. “We do not propose to say that there shall be no rich men. We do not ask to divide the wealth. We only propose that, when one man gets more than he and his children and children’s children can spend or use in their lifetimes, that then we shall say that such person has his share. That means that a few million dollars is the limit to what any one man can own.” – Huey Long
8. “There should be every man a king in this land flowing with milk and honey instead of the lords of finance at the top and slaves and peasants at the bottom.” – Huey Long
9. “Or maybe these words of Theodore Roosevelt would be proof:“We must pay equal attention to the distribution of prosperity. The only prosperity worth having is that which affects the mass of people.” – Huey Long
10. “Not a single dime of concentrated, bloated, pompous wealth, massed in the hands of a few people, has been raked down to relieve the masses.” – Huey Long
11. “We shall have to say right here and now that the hand of imperial finance shall go no farther into its strangulation of the American people” – Huey Long
12. “Before this miserable system of wreckage has destroyed the life germ of respect and culture in American people, let us save what was here, merely by having none too poor and none too rich.” – Huey Long
13. “We ought to take care of every single one of the sick and disabled veterans…every man that wore the uniform of this country is entitled to be taken care of, and there is money enough to do it” – Huey Long
14. “Fully 96% of our people live below the poverty line, while 4% own 87% of the wealth.” – Huey Long
15. “But in the name of our good government, people today are seeing their own children hungry, tired, half-naked, lifting their tear-dimmed eyes into the sad faces of fathers and mothers, who cannot give them food and clothing they both need, and which is necessary to sustain them, and that goes on day after day, and night after night, when day gets into darkness and blackness, knowing those children would arise in the morning without being fed, and probably go to bed at night without being fed.” – Huey Long
16. “I would rather see my laws passed than be President.” – Huey Long
17. “I propose that the surplus of all the big fortunes, above the few millions to any one person at the most, shall go into the United States ownership.” – Huey Long
18. “We are not going to have this good little America here long if we do not take to redistribute the wealth of this country” – Huey Long
19. “It is impossible for the United States to preserve itself as a republic or as a democracy when 600 families own more of this nation’s wealth.” – Huey Long
20. “All this can be done with ease only if we will say to the rich,“None shall be too rich!” – Huey Long
21. “He rode into the president’s office on the platform of redistributing wealth. He has done no such thing and has made no effort to do any such thing since he has been there.” – Huey Long
22. “We propose that the right to education and the extent of education shall be determined and gauged not so much by the financial ability of the parents but by the mental ability and energy of a child to absorb the learning at a college.” – Huey Long
23. “Life, liberty, and happiness to all our people” – Huey Long
24. “…our hope lies in the ultimate victory for the share our wealth plan, none would have too much, but all would have enough.” – Huey Long
25. “We are either going to apply the laws which were given from Heaven, or our country is not going to last.” – Huey Long
26. “So America would start again with millionaires, but no multimillionaires or billionaires; with some poor, but none too poor to be denied the comforts of life.” – Huey Long
27. “And how happy the youth of this land would be tomorrow morning if they knew instantly their right to a home and the comforts of a home and to complete college and professional training and education were assured!” – Huey Long
II. Huey Long quotes about Franklin Delano Roosevelt
28. “Since Mr.Roosevelt has taken the office of President,he has opposed every effort to adopt the plan for redistribution of wealth.” – Huey Long
29. “The Roosevelt depression is just a double dose of the Hoover depression” – Huey Long
30. “We compare the Roosevelt depression with the Hoover depression and we find the Roosevelt depression debt is $9 billion more than the Hoover depression debt; the unemployment under Roosevelt has eclipsed everything Hoover ever heard about.” – Huey Long
31. “I spoke kindly of Garner as a prospective candidate, as well as of Al Smith, but I expressed contrary predictions on the then Governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt.” – Huey Long
32. “The only difference in Roosevelt before the election and now is that Roosevelt now says he is still for them, but that you must not do anything about them.” – Huey Long
33. “Progressive members of the United States Senate, particularly Senators Norris and Wheeler, played a material part in my inclination for the then Governor of New York and present President of the United States. They were the boldest, most courageous men I had ever met.” – Huey Long
34. “We must now become awakened! We must know the truth and speak the truth. There is no use to wait 3 more years. It is not Roosevelt or ruin; it is Roosevelt’s ruin.” – Huey Long
35. “The trouble is, Roosevelt hasn’t taken all of my ideas; just part of them. I’m about one hundred yards ahead of him. We’re on the same road, but I’m here and he’s there.” – Huey Long
36. “Hoover is a hoot owl and Roosevelt is a scrootch owl. A hoot owl bangs into the nest and knocks the hen clean off and catches her while she’s falling. But the scrootch owl slips into the roost and scrootches up to the hen and talks softly to her.” – Huey Long
37. “Mr. President, I am not undertaking to answer the charge that I am ignorant. It is true. I am an ignorant man. I have had no college education. I have not even had a high school education. But the things that takes me far in politics is that I do not have to color what comes into my mind and into my heart.” – Huey Long
38. “Whenever this administration has gone to the left I have voted for it, and whenever it has gone to the right I have voted against it.” – Huey Long
39. “You are giving a little man a biscuit to eat, and you put a barrel of flour more taxes on top of his head to carry.” – Huey Long
40. “He admits that most of the people of America are impoverished because the rich people have all the money. He says they ought not to allow them to have it all, but in the next breath he gives out a statement that the big rich must not be taxed very much, and that is as far as we ever get with him.” – Huey Long
41. “I will not participate in the Democratic victory tonight. I do not care for my share in a victory that means that the poor and the downtrodden, the blind, the helpless, the orphaned, the bleeding, the wounded, the hungry, and the distressed will be the victims.” – Huey Long
42. “You may have covered up the grave, but you have not buried the corpse very deep.” – Huey Long
43. “He rode into the president’s office on the platform of redistributing wealth. He has done no such thing and has made no effort to do any such thing since he has been there.” – Huey Long
44. “The only difference between Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Hoover is that things are much worse in every degree under Mr. Roosevelt than ever under Mr. Hoover.” – Huey Long
45. “But going into this third year of Roosevelt’s administration, I can hope for nothing further from the Roosevelt policies.” – Huey Long
46. “I found a man as smart as I am. I don’t know if I can travel with him.” – Huey Long
III. Huey Long quotes about politics
47. “You will find that you cannot do without politicians. They are a necessary evil in this day and time” – Huey Long
48. “If fascism came to America it would be on a program of Americanism.” – Huey Long
49. “A perfect democracy can come close to looking like a dictatorship, a democracy in which the people are so satisfied they have no complaint.” – Huey Long
50. “They’ve got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen.” – Huey Long
51. “The only difference I’ve ever found between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership is that one of them is skinning you from the ankle up and the other from the ear down.” – Huey Long
52. “I used to get things done by saying please. Now I dynamite ’em out of my path.” – Huey Long
53. “I’m for the poor man — all poor men, black and white, they all gotta have a chance. They gotta have a home, a job, and a decent education for their children. ‘Every man a king’ — that’s my slogan.” – Huey Long
54. “The people of this country want relief, and they do not have to eat a whole side of beef to tell when it is tainted. They have bitten off the hoof of this situation in the United States. They know. We have given them no place to go.” – Huey Long
55. “Will you please tell me what sense there is running on a socialist ticket in America today? What’s the use of being right only to be defeated?” – Huey Long
56. “The trouble is we’ve got too many men running things in this country that think they’re smarter than the Lord.” – Huey Long
57. “We are either going to apply the laws which were given from Heaven, or the country is not going to last.” – Huey Long
58. “They say they don’t like my methods. Well, I don’t like them either. I really don’t like to have to do things the way I do. I’d much rather get up before the legislature and say, ‘Now this is a good law and it’s for the benefit of the people, and I’d like you to vote for it in the interest of the public welfare.’ Only I know that laws ain’t made that way. You’ve got to fight fire with fire.” – Huey Long
59. “A mob is coming here in six months to hang the other ninety-five of you damned scoundrels, and I’m undecided whether to stick here with you or go out and lead them.” – Huey Long
60. “We haven’t a Communist or Socialist in Louisiana. Huey P. Long is the greatest enemy that the Communists and Socialists have to deal with.” – Huey Long
61. “Corrupted by wealth and power, your government is like a restaurant with one dish” – Huey Long
62. “I would describe a demagogue as a politician who don’t keep his promises ” – Huey Long
IV. Random Huey Long quotes
63. “Every man a king, but no one wears a crown.” – Huey Long
64. “The time has come for good men to rise above principle.” – Huey Long
65. “I said ‘I’m the governor and I say the ignorant in this state have to learn, blacks as well as whites.’ And they learned.” – Huey Long
66. “Always take the offensive — the defensive ain’t worth a damn.” – Huey Long
67. “Anybody that lets his public policies be mixed up with religious prejudice is a plain fool.” – Huey Long
68. “A man is not a dictator when he is given a commission from the people and carries it out.” – Huey Long
69. “I can frighten or buy ninety-nine out of every one hundred men.” – Huey Long
70. “All I care is what the boys at the forks of the creek think of me.” – Huey Long
71. “You sometimes fight fire with fire. The end justifies the means. I would do it some other way if there was time or if it wasn’t necessary to do it this way.” – Huey Long
72. “Hard work is as overrated as monogamy.” – Huey Long
73. “I have been able to do a hell of a lot of things down there because I am Huey Long” – Huey Long
74. “My voice will be the same as it has been. Patronage will not change it. Fear will not change it. Persecution will not change it. It cannot be changed while people suffer. The only way it can be changed is to make the lives of these people decent and respectable. No one will ever hear political opposition out of me when it is done.” – Huey Long
75. “I don’t know much about Hitler. Except for that last thing, about the Jews. There has never been a country that put its heel down on the Jews that ever lived afterward.” – Huey Long
76. “Only I know that laws ain’t made that way. You’ve got to fight fire with fire.” – Huey Long
77. “We shall have to say right here and now that the hand of imperial finance shall not go farther into its strangulation of the American people and that the hand of imperialistic banking control shall be decentralized instead of centralized in America.” – Huey Long
78. “Now, just a word about the poor Negroes … They’re here. They’ve got to be cared for … The poor Negroes have got to live, too.” – Huey Long
79. “We started them to school. They learned to read. They learned to work simple arithmetic problems. Now some of our plantation owners can’t figure the poor devils out of everything at the close of each year.” – Huey Long
80. “Don’t let me die, I have got so much to do.” – Huey Long
81. “It looks like we are going to have to put a tax of 5 cents a bottle on Coca–Cola in Louisiana.” – Huey Long
82. “A conservative estimate is that about sixty-five or seventy percent of the entire wealth of the United States is owned by two percent of the people. Sixty-eight percent of the whole people living in the United States own but two percent of its wealth.” – Huey Long
83.“Treat them just the same as anybody else, give them an opportunity to make a living. Negroes should have a chance to work and to make a living, and to get an education.” – Huey Long
84. “I’m for the poor man—all poor men. Black and white, they all gotta have a chance. They gotta have a home, a job, and a decent education for their children. ‘Every Man a King’—that’s my slogan. That means every man, niggers along with the rest, but not especially for niggers.” – Huey Long
85. “Let us get out of the entanglements of Europe and the Orient in the quickest way possible.” – Huey Long
V. Huey Long quotes from his autobiography
86. “I spent my money as I made it. What I did not spend, I either loaned or gave away to other boys at the University more in need than myself.” – Huey Long
87. “I studied law as much as from sixteen to twenty hours each day.” – Huey Long
88. “How can this Nation prosper with the ordinary child having only twenty chances in a thousand of securing the first part of the game? This is the condition, north, east, south, and west; with wealth concentrating, classes becoming defined, there is not the opportunity for Christian uplift and education, and cannot be until there is more economic reform. This is the problem that the good people of this country must consider.” – Huey Long
89. “Where are the schools that you have waited for your children to have, that have never come? Where are the roads and the highways that you send your money to build, that are no nearer now than ever before? Where are the institutions to care for the sick and disabled?” – Huey Long
90. “I would like to have peace to carry out the program for the State. I said.” – Huey Long
91. “They kept on hollering, and I simply had to put my foot down. I said, I’m the governor and I say the ignorant in this state have to learn, blacks as well as whites. And they learned.” – Huey Long
92. “I had rather go down to a thousand impeachments than to admit that I am the Governor of the State that does not dare to call the Standard Oil Company to account so that we can educate our children and care for destitute, sick, and afflicted. If this State is still to be ruled by the power of the money of this corporation, I am too weak for its governor.” – Huey Long
93. “It was the battle of Louisiana’s history. For once the public press was united—all against me.” – Huey Long
94. “I am participating here anyway, gentlemen. For the present, you can just call me the Kingfish.” – Huey Long
95. “So, in 1929, when the fortune-holders of America grew powerful enough that one percent of the people owned nearly everything, ninety-nine percent of the people owned practically nothing, not even enough to pay their debts, a collapse was at hand.” – Huey Long
96. “I foresaw the depression in 1929. In letters reproduced in this volume, I had predicted all of the consequences many years before they occurred.” – Huey Long
97. “I have expected this crash for three years,” I replied. “It is here for many, many years. It cannot end until there is a redistribution of wealth. Make your plans on that basis.” – Huey Long
98. “When Franklin Roosevelt became President, I reintroduced in the first session of Congress which he convoked my proposition to limit the size of fortunes and to spread the wealth among all the people.
A vote on my proposal was: Yeas 14, Nays 50.” – Huey Long
99. “Can liars never be persuaded to desist from ascribing my success in politics to a machine in New Orleans ?” – Huey Long
100. “Every man a king” conveys the great plan of God and of the Declaration of Independence, which said: “All men are created equal.” It conveys that no one man is the lord of another, but that from the head to the foot of every man is carried his sovereignty.” – Huey Long
VI. Sources and further reading
- Huey P. Long, Every Man A King: The Autobiography Of Huey P. Long, Hachette Books, 1996.
- T.Harry Williams, Huey Long, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1981
- Dr. Gerald L. K. Smith, Huey P. Long A Summary Of Greatness, Political Genius, American Martyr, Lulu.com, 2015
- Michael Collins Piper, Share the Wealth: Huey Long Vs. Wall Street, American Free Press, 2010