“To be sure, Africa is largely uncivilized. There is support for the contention that the United Nations has moved too rapidly in creating nations … which are not ready for independence.”
—WRAL Viewpoint, 1961
“Legally, schoolboys can’t even say good-bye anymore, for good-bye is a contraction of ‘God be with you.’ Of course, if a child outside a school were calling to one inside, the outside child could still say good-bye, but the inside one would have to say ‘Stay loose’ or some other constitutional slogan.
—WRAL Viewpoint, 1962
“By sad experience it has been learned that sexual perverts are far and away the greatest security risks possible. They are subject to blackmail at the first threat of exposure. There are untold incidents of betrayal committed by these weak, morally sick wretches who had sought and obtained government clearance.”
–WRAL Viewpoint, 1964
“A substantial part of … abusive correspondence … we receive bears the Chapel Hill postmark. Here is a community widely advertised for its climate of intellectualism, its ‘liberal’ philosophies, and its spirit of brotherhood. But if the mail we receive is fair measurement, there is room to wonder why the intellectuality of such a charming village insists on traveling a one-way street. Rarely is there an indication of tolerance for conflicting points of view, much less liberality in the consideration of them. And we have come to learn that brotherhood bearing a Chapel Hill postmark is strictly of the Cain-and-Abel variety.”
–WRAL Viewpoint, 1964
“It’s all very well and good to talk about ‘uplifting society,’ but somewhere along the line we must face the fact that from the beginning of time a lot of human beings have been born bums, but most of them–until fairly recently–were kept from behaving like bums because work was necessary for all who wished to eat. The more we remove the penalties for being a bum, the more bumism is going to blossom.”
–WRAL Viewpoint, 1965
“The Negroes of America … have a Congress which would tomorrow morning enact Webster’s Dictionary into law if someone accidentally threw it into the hopper with a civil-rights label. And the Supreme Court would stand in applause.”
–WRAL Viewpoint, 1965
“The nation has been hypnotized by the swaying and gesturing of the watusi and the frug.”
–WRAL Viewpoint, 1966
“The subject matter is so obscene, so revolting, it’s difficult for me to stand here and talk about it. I may throw up.”
–Discussing an AIDS prevention comic book, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 1978
“I think busing is the worst tyranny ever perpetuated on America.”
–The News & Observer, 1981
“We’ve got to have some common sense about a disease transmitted by people deliberately engaged in unnatural acts.”
–Arguing for reduced AIDS funding, The New York Times, 1985
“This senator is not a goody two-shoes. I’ve lived a long time, but every Christian ethic cries out for me to do something. I call a spade a spade, a perverted human being a perverted human being.”
–Discussing homosexuality, Los Angeles Times, 1987
“I’m so old-fashioned I believe in horse-whipping.”
–The News & Observer, 1991
“She’s not your garden-variety lesbian. She’s a militant-activist-mean lesbian, working her whole career to advance the homosexual agenda.”
–Discussing HUD Assistant Secretary Roberta Achtenberg, The News & Observer, 1993
“If regular campaigns are legally sanctioned war, then my campaigns were often the equivalent of nuclear war.”
—Here’s Where I Stand, 2005
“The longer I live, the more convinced I am that God didn’t direct the creation of America in a moment of idle indifference. I believe God had a purpose for America. He had a meaning and a destiny.”
—Here’s Where I Stand, 2005
“After my amendment prohibited the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] from using taxpayers’ money to sponsor obscenity was approved, I was showered with hoots and jeers … One memorable letter came from a woman in San Francisco who let me know she hated me and the news made her throw up. I wrote back and said, ‘Dear lady, you may be on to something. The next time that happens, put a frame around it and send it to the NEA. They will probably send you $5,000.”
—Here’s Where I Stand, 2005
“It is hardly coincidence that banishing the Lord from the public schools has resulted in schools being taken over by a totally secularist philosophy. Christianity has been driven out. In its place has been enshrined a sort of permissiveness in which the drug culture has flourished, as have pornography, crime and fornication–in short, everything but disciplined learning.”
—Here’s Where I Stand, 2005
“Watching a nice man with so little experience or familiarity with national and international issues try to project himself as an expert or refer to himself as the ‘senior Senator’ from our state simply because he arrived in the Senate chamber shortly before the immensely qualified U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole struck me as ‘overreaching.’”
–Discussing John Edwards, Here’s Where I Stand, 2005
“On September 11, 3,000 Americans were killed by a foreign enemy. The American people responded with shock, sadness, and a deep and righteous anger–and rightly so. Yet let us not forget that every passing day in our country, more than 3,000 innocent Americans are killed at the hands of so-called doctors, who rip those little ones from their mother’s wombs. They are the most innocent victims of all–small, helpless, defenseless babies. For these unborn Americans, every day is September 11.”
—Here’s Where I Stand, 2005