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Harry S Truman Quotes

Total quotes: 59
“I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”
— Harry S Truman, HARRY S. TRUMAN: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Tagged: Death, Sorrow, Loss
“I once described Washington as a doer surrounded by thinkers. He knew how to make the thinkers work for him, and only a truly superb politician and leader is able to do that.”
— Harry S Truman, Where the Buck Stops: The Personal and Private Writings of Harry S. Truman
Tagged: Washington, dC, Doers, Thinkers
“The Russians are liars – you can't trust them. At Potsdam they agreed to everything and broke their word. It's too bad the second world power is like this, but that's the way it is, and we must keep our strength.”
— Harry S Truman, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
Tagged: russians, liars, Potsdam, strength
“Nothing is more essential to the future peace of the world than continued cooperation of the nations which had to muster the force necessary to defeat the conspiracy of the Axis powers to dominate the world.”
— Harry S Truman
Tagged: War, Peace, Cooperation, Nations, Axis, UN
“I was the only calm one in the house. You see I’ve been shot at by experts.”
— Harry S Truman, Bess W Truman
Tagged: calm, Battle Tested
“I've said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!”
— Harry S Truman, Truman Speaks: On the Presidency, the Constitution, and Statecraft
Tagged: HUAC, McCarthyism, Red Scare
“No government is perfect. One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected.”
— Harry S Truman
Tagged: Government, Perfect, Democracy
“At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.”
— Harry S Truman
Tagged: world history, nation, Choice, Freedom
“They are trying to make an elder statesmen of me, but they will never succeed.”
— Harry S Truman, Mr. Citizen
Tagged: Elder Statesman
“My favorite animal is the mule. He has more sense than a horse. He knows when to stop eating — and when to stop working.”
— Harry S Truman, Mr. Citizen
Tagged: Mule, Horse, Sense
“I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them…that's all the powers of the President amount to.”
— Harry S Truman, Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership
Tagged: Persuasion, Presidency
“In this shrinking world, it is futile to seek safety behind geographical barriers. Real security will be found only in law and in justice.”
— Harry S Truman
Tagged: Shrinking World, Law, Justice, Borders
“The Republicans favor a minimum wage — the smaller the minimum the better.”
— Harry S Truman, Good Old Harry; The Wit and Wisdom of Harry S. Truman
Tagged: Republicans, Minimum Wage
“He’s one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.”
— Harry S Truman, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman
Tagged: Richard Nixon, Duplicity, Politicians
“It isn't important who is ahead at one time or another in either an election or horse race. It's the horse that comes in first at the finish line that counts.”
— Harry S Truman, Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Busch Presiential
Tagged: Horse Race, Slow and Steady
“My definition of a leader in a free country is a man who can persuade people to do what they don’t want to do, or do what they’re too lazy to do, and like it.”
— Harry S Truman, Where the Buck Stops: The Personal and Private Writings of Harry S. Truman
Tagged: leader, Persuasion
“The dictators of the world say that if you tell a lie often enough, why, people will believe it. Well, if you tell the truth often enough, they’ll believe it and go along with you.”
— Harry S Truman, Where the Buck Stops: The Personal and Private Writings of Harry S. Truman
Tagged: Dictators, Truth, lying
“No nation on this globe should be more internationally minded than America because it was built by all nations.”
— Harry S Truman, Good Old Harry; The Wit and Wisdom of Harry S. Truman
Tagged: America, Globalism, Nations
“I sincerely wish that every member of Congress could visit the displaced person's camp in Germany and Austria and see just what is happening to 500,000 human beings through no fault of their own.”
— Harry S Truman, Great Jewish Quotations: By Jews and About Jews
Tagged: Germany, Austria, Concentration Camps, Nazis
“Invasion and conquest by Communist armies would be a horror beyond our capacity to imagine. But invasion and conquest by Communist ideas of right and wrong would be just as bad.”
— Harry S Truman
Tagged: Communism, Red Scare
“And as I say to you, whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court, he ceases to be your friend, you can be sure of that.”
— Harry S Truman, Truman Speaks: On the Presidency, the Constitution, and Statecraft
Tagged: Supreme Court, Friendship
“When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn't for you. It's for the Presidency.”
— Harry S Truman, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman
Tagged: President, Presidency, 21-Gun Salute, Honor
“I never gave anybody hell. I just told the truth and they think it's hell.”
— Harry S Truman, My Fellow Americans with 2 CDs, 2E: The Most Important Speeches of America's Presidents, from George Washington to Barack Obama
Tagged: Truth, Give 'em Hell
“My forebears were Confederates...but my very stomach turned over when I had learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of Army trucks in Mississippi and beaten.”
— Harry S Truman, Harry S. Truman by Margaret Truman(1993-05-01)
Tagged: Confederates, Negroes, racism, Mississippi
“So much blood has already been shed for the ideals which we cherish, and for which Franklin Delano Roosevelt lived and died, that we dare not permit even a momentary pause in the hard fight for victory.”
— Harry S Truman
Tagged: Bloodshed, World War II, FDR, victory
“If wars in the future are to be prevented the nations must be united in their determination to keep the peace under law.”
— Harry S Truman
Tagged: Wars, Peace, Future, UN
“Some of my best friends never agree with me politically.”
— Harry S Truman, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
“The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know.”
— Harry S Truman, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman
Tagged: History, New, Revisionism
“I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president. That's the answer to that. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”
— Harry S Truman, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman
Tagged: Douglas MacArthur, dumb, You're Fired
“I do not believe in shooting anything that cannot shoot back.”
— Harry S Truman, Mr. Citizen
Tagged: Fairness
“If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances. Neither of them thinks anything of their pledged word.”
— Harry S Truman, National Affairs: Anniversary Remembrance
Tagged: German, Russia, Nazis, Soviets, Playing Both Sides, Adolf Hitler
“Today, the entire world is looking to America for enlightened leadership to peace and progress. Such a leadership requires vision, courage and tolerance. It can be provided only by a united nation deeply devoted to the highest ideals.”
— Harry S Truman
Tagged: America, Leadership, Progress, Tolerance, Vision, Courage
“We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. F.B.I. is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex life scandles [sic] and plain blackmail when they should be catching criminals. They also have a habit of sneering at local law enforcement officers.”
— Harry S Truman
Tagged: Gestapo, F.B.I., Secret Police, Sex Scandals
“The Russians are like us, they look and act like us. They are fine people. They got along with our soldiers in Berlin very well. As far as I am concerned, they can have whatever they want just so they don't try to impose their system on others.”
— Harry S Truman, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
Tagged: russians, Nazis, Soviets, Berlin, Communism
“The people can never understand why the President does not use his powers to make them behave. Well all the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.”
— Harry S Truman, Good Old Harry; The Wit and Wisdom of Harry S. Truman
Tagged: President, Presidential Powers, Public Relations, flattering, Kissing
“I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. 
I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.”
— Harry S Truman
Tagged: US Intervention, Armed Insurrection, Freedom
“In bitter despair, some people have come to believe that wars are inevitable. With tragic fatalism, they insist that wars have always been, of necessity, and of necessity wars always will be. To such defeatism, men and women of good will must not and can not yield. The outlook for humanity is not so hopeless.”
— Harry S Truman
Tagged: Despair, War, Defeatism, humanity
“People are very much wrought up about the Communist bugaboo.”
— Harry S Truman
Tagged: Communist, Red Scare, Bugaboo
“It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in our country’s efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to insure that all Americans enjoy these rights. When I say all Americans, I mean all Americans.”
— Harry S Truman, Speech to the NAACP
Tagged: Freedom, Equality, citizens, Americans, rights
“All freedom-loving nations, not the United States alone, are facing a stern challenge from the Communist tyranny. In the circumstances, alarm is justified. The man who isn't alarmed simply doesn't understand the situation — or he is crazy. But alarm is one thing, and hysteria is another. Hysteria impels people to destroy the very thing they are struggling to preserve.”
— Harry S Truman
Tagged: Freedom, First World, Second World, Communism, Iron Curtain, Alarm, Hysteria
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