Harry S Truman Quotes
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Tact is the ability to step on a man's toes without messing up the shine on his shoes.
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It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We must build a new world, a far better world - one in which the eternal dignity of man is respected.
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We have to get tough with the Russians. They don't know how to behave. They are like bulls in a china shop. They are only 25 years old. We are over 100 and the British are centuries older. We have got to teach them how to behave.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There are always a lot of people so afraid of rocking the boat that they stop rowing. We can never get ahead that way.
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Washington is a very easy city for you to forget where you came from and why you got there in the first place.
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This administration is going to be cussed and discussed for years to come.
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I think there is an immense shortage of Christian charity among so-called Christians.
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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.
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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.
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Ignorance and its hand-maidens, prejudice, intolerance, suspicion of our fellowman, breed dictators and breed wars.
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In this shrinking world, it is futile to seek safety behind geographical barriers. Real security will be found only in law and in justice.
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Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action, not only against their human oppressors, but also against their ancient enemies-hunger, misery, and despair.
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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.
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Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.
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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.
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The fundamental basis of this Nation's law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul.
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The greatest honor that has come to me, and that can ever come to me in my life, is to be Grand Master of Masons in Missouri.