Harry S. Truman Quotes (105 Quotes)

How far would have Moses gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt.

Give me a one-handed economist All my economists say, 'on one hand ... on the other.'

If I'd known how much packing I'd have to do, I'd have run again.

I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here.

The President is always abused. If he isn't, he isn't doing anything.

Give me a one-handed economist All my economics say, ''On the one hand on the other.''

Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court he ceases to be your friend.

This administration is going to be cussed and discussed for years to come.

Justice remains the greatest power on earth. To that tremendous power alone will we submit.

Well, I wouldn't say that I was in the great class, but I had a great time while I was trying to be great.

It sure is hell to be president.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

If you can't convince them, confuse them.

All my life I have fought against prejudice and intolerance.

Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice.

A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a leader.

A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.

The reward of suffering is experience.

Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny.

Radio address to delegates at the opening session of the United Nations conference, San Francisco, April 23, 1945 We must build a new world, a far better world one in which the eternal dignity of man is respected.

Everybody has the right to express what he thinks. That, of course, lets the crackpots in. But if you cannot tell a crackpot when you see one, then you ought to be taken in.

I studied the lives of great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm.

Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it.

The difficulty with businessmen entering politics, after they've had a successful business career, is that they want to start at the top.

I do not believe there is a problem in this country or the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.

To hell with them. When history is written they will be the sons of bitches - not I.

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

In my opinion eight years as president is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in that capacity.

You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.

The atom bomb was no "great decision." It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.

A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for 15 years.

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.

A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years.

Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought.

I had faith in Israel before it was established, I have in it now. I believe it has a glorious future before it - not just another sovereign nation, but as an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.

Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here.

Study men, not historians.

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.

You can never get all the facts from just one newspaper, and unless you have all the facts, you cannot make proper judgements about what is going on.

Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.

The White House is the finest prison in the world.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

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.'

The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

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.

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima.... The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.

Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.