Harry S Truman Quotes
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In my generation, this was not the first occasion when the strong had attacked the weak.Communism was acting in Korea just as Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese had acted ten, fifteen, and twenty years earlier. I felt certain that if South Korea was allowed to fall, Communist leaders would be emboldened to override nations closer to our own shores.
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To be able to lead others, a man must be willing to go forward alone.
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A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.
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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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To reporters the day after his accession to the presidency, April 13, 1945: When they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me.
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We must help to the limits of our strength. And we will.
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Three things ruin a man: power, money, and women. I never wanted power. I never had any money, and the only woman in my life is up at the house right now.
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I think there is an immense shortage of Christian charity among so-called Christians.
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It is organized as a fellowship of men, a system of morals, a philosophy taught by degrees through the use of symbol, story, legend, pictures, and drama. It has served as a center of union among differing backgrounds, cultures, and countries. It serves as the means of conciliating true friendship among persons, who, because of differences, must have otherwise remained at a perpetual distance.
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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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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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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 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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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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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."
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It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
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Beware of the guy praying loudest in the amen corner.
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A leader is the man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don't want to do, and like it.
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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.
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The White House is the finest prison in the world.
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Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.
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The difficulty with businessmen entering politics, after they've had a successful business career, is that they want to start at the top.
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If I hadn't been President of the United States, I probably would have ended up a piano player in a bawdy house.
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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.