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I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.
Harry S Truman
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Tact is the ability to step on a man's toes without messing up the shine on his shoes.
Harry S Truman
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I consider Monroe a pretty minor president. In spite of the Monroe Doctrine. That's the only important thing he ever did more or less on his own, when you really get down to it.
Harry S Truman
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Beware of the guy praying loudest in the amen corner.
Harry S Truman
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For reasons of national security and out of consideration for some people still alive I have omitted certain material. Some of this material cannot be made available for many years, perhaps for many generations.
Harry S Truman
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I have tried my best to give the nation everything I had in me. There are probably a million people who could have done the job better than I did it, but I had the job and I always quote an epitaph on a tombstone in a cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona: "Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damndest."
Harry S Truman
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I received a card the other day from Steve Early which said, "Don't Worry Me--I am an 8 Ulcer Man on 4 Ulcer Pay.
Harry S Truman
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For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy making arm of the government.
Harry S Truman
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I have to decide Japanese strategy - shall we invade Japan proper or shall we bomb and blockade? That is my hardest decision to date. But I'll make it when I have all the facts.
Harry S Truman
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We must build a new world, a far better world - one in which the eternal dignity of man is respected.
Harry S Truman
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Some day we'll awake, have a reformation of the heart, teach our kids honor and kill a few sex psychologists, put boys in high schools with men teachers not sissies, close all the girls' finishing schools, shoot all the effeciency experts and become a nation of God's people once more.
Harry S Truman
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We must help to the limits of our strength. And we will.
Harry S Truman
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I think there is an immense shortage of Christian charity among so-called Christians.
Harry S Truman
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We have gone a long way toward civilization and religious tolerance, and we have a good example in this country. Here the many Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church do not seek to destroy one another in physical violence just because they do not interpret every verse of the Bible in exactly the same way. Here we now have the freedom of all religions, and I hope that never again will we have a repetition of religious bigotry, as we have had in certain periods of our own history. There is no room for that kind of foolishness here.
Harry S Truman
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It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
Harry S Truman
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I have little patience with people who take the Bill of Rights for granted. The Bill of Rights, contained in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, is every American's guarantee of freedom.
Harry S Truman
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I'm the ultimately responsible person in this organization. Other people can pass the buck to me, but I can't pass the buck to anyone else.
Harry S Truman
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First of all, it is clear that our efforts in Korea can blunt the will of the Chinese Communists to continue the struggle. The United Nations forces have put up a tremendous fight in Korea and have inflicted very heavy casualties on the enemy. Our forces are stronger now than they have been before. These are plain facts which may discourage the Chinese Communists from continuing their attack.
Harry S Truman
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The C students run the world.
Harry S Truman
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I suppose that history will remember my term in office as the years when the Cold War began to overshadow our lives. I have hardly a day in office that has not been dominated by this all-embracing struggle. And always in the background there has been the atomic bomb. But when history says that my term of office saw the begining of the Cold War, it will also say that in those eight years we have set the course that can win it.
Harry S Truman
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I tend to pair up Benjamin Harrison and Dwight Eisenhower because they're the two presidents I can think of who most preferred laziness to labor.... There's not much else you can say about Harrison except that he was president of the United States.
Harry S Truman
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The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount…If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.
Harry S Truman
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Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.
Harry S Truman
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The attack upon Korea was an outright breach of the peace and a violation of the Charter of the United Nations. By their actions in Korea, Communist leaders have demonstrated their contempt for the basic moral principles on which the United Nations is founded. This is a direct challenge to the efforts of the free nations to build the kind of world in which men can live in freedom and peace.
Harry S Truman
