Top 100 Truman's Quotes
#1. All the other members of the U.N. were admitted, at the outset or subsequently, but Israel was created by the U.N. as a Jewish state, on the motion of Stalin's ambassador, seconded by President Truman's.
Conrad Black
#2. The final word belongs to one of Truman's aides, George Elsey. "It's all well and good to come along later and say the bomb was a horrible thing," he commented subsequently. "The whole goddamn war was a horrible thing.
William E. Leuchtenburg
#3. Leo Crowley, Harry [Truman]'s Foreign Economic Administrator, tells Congressmen the theory ... : 'If you create good governments in foreign countries, automatically you will have better markets for ourselves.' With that honeycunt staring you in the face, you'd forget your grammar too.
E.L. Doctorow
#4. I never graduated from Iowa, but I was only there for two terms - Truman's and Eisenhower's.
Alex Karras
#5. My life is not unlike Truman's. I can't go anywhere.
Jim Carrey
#6. Truman's version was: "The only new thing in the world is the history we have not learned." And, in the House
Anonymous
#7. But they all recognized the steady, no-nonsense influence Jack had had on Truman; he was the ballast to Truman's airy sails.
Melanie Benjamin
#8. Speaking out as he had never before done in Congress, Lyndon Johnson in 1947 opposed most of Truman's Fair Deal.
Robert A. Caro
#10. All will concede that in order to have good neighbors, we must also be good neighbors. That applies in every field of human endeavor.
Harry S. Truman
#11. You members of this Conference are to be the architects of the better world. In your hands rests our future.
Harry S. Truman
#13. The friendless, the weak, the victims of prejudice and public excitement are entitled to the same quality of justice and fair play that the rich, the powerful, the well-connected, and the fellow with pull thinks he can get.
Harry S. Truman
#14. We have found that it is easier for men to die together on the field of battle than it is for them to live together at home in peace.
Harry S. Truman
#15. There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl's complexion.
Truman Capote
#16. Psychoneuroimmunology is concerned specifically with the impact of mental attitudes on the body's resistance to disease, especially exploring the links among and between the mind, the brain and the immune system.
Karol K. Truman
#17. We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.
Harry S. Truman
#18. I admired Truman, among many other things, because he integrated the Army. I admired JFK because the very first civil rights legislation was passed at his insistence. JFK showed what you could do, though he was a deeply flawed person, as we all now know.
Jed S. Rakoff
#20. Shoot, boy, the country's just fulla folks what knows everything, and don't understand nothing, just fullofem.
Truman Capote
#21. I can't get excited about a man until he's forty-two. I know this idiot girl who keeps telling me I ought to go to a head-shrinker; she says I have a father complex. Which is so merde. I simply trained myself to like older men, and it was the smartest thing I ever did.
Truman Capote
#22. It's a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.
Truman Capote
#23. Whenever a fellow tells me he's bipartisan, I know he's going to vote against me.
Harry S. Truman
#25. In the long view, no nation is any healthier than its children.
Harry S. Truman
#26. Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.
Harry S. Truman
#27. Maybe the older you grow and the less easy it is to put thought into action, maybe that's why it gets all locked up in your head and becomes a burden.
Truman Capote
#28. Most of the time most people know the right thing to do ... its the doing of it that gives them trouble
Harry S. Truman
#29. My mom and dad are second-generation Greek-Americans who instilled in our middle-class family the values of hard work, self-reliance, and service, exemplified by my father's tenure as a U.S. Marine who was stationed at Camp David under President Truman.
James Costos
#30. I understood Truman Capote's brilliant assessment of the writer's dilemma: When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip.
Betsy Lerner
#31. 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.
Harry S. Truman
#32. It's a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year.
Truman Capote
#33. There isn't any question about Washington's greatness. If his administration had been a failure, there would have been no United States. A lesser man couldn't have done it ... Washington was both a great administrator and a great leader, a truly great man in every way.
Harry S. Truman
#34. And that Perry could not abide: anyone's ridiculing the parrot,
Truman Capote
#35. What I am trying to achieve is a voice sitting by a fireplace telling you a story on a winter's evening.
Truman Capote
#36. The President hears a hundred voices telling him that he is the greatest man in the world. He must listen carefully indeed to hear the one voice that tells him his is not.
Harry S. Truman
#37. Nothing is more important in our national life than the welfare of our children.
Harry S. Truman
#38. That's not bad. I can't get excited by a man until he's forty-two.
Truman Capote
#39. A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a leader.
Harry S. Truman
#40. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.
Harry S. Truman
#41. Some of my best friends never agree with me politically.
Harry S. Truman
#42. To be able to lead others, a man must be willing to go forward alone.
Harry S. Truman
#43. 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.
Harry S. Truman
#44. I'm very proud that I'm smart enough to get to the point
Harry S. Truman
#45. Unless Russia is face with an iron fist and strong language, another is in the making. Only one language do they understand - 'How many divisions have you?' ... I'm tired of babying the Soviets.
Harry S. Truman
#46. 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.
Harry S. Truman
#47. If I want to be great, I have to win the victory over myself ... self-d iscipline.
Harry S. Truman
#48. Herbert Hoover once ran on the slogan, 'Two cars in every garage'. Apparently, the Republican candidate this year is running on the slogan, 'Two families in every garage'.
Harry S. Truman
#49. 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.
Harry S. Truman
#50. On the opposite bank, a hummingbird, whirring it's invisible wings, ate the heart of a giant tiger lily.
Truman Capote
#51. Work Hard. Do your best. Keep your word. Never get too big for your britches. Trust in God. Have no fear; and Never forget a friend.
Harry S. Truman
#52. He's now letting Chang play his own game - and he does that better than anyone.
Christine Truman
#54. Canadian-American relations for many years did not develop spontaneously. The example of accord provided by our two countries did not come about merely through the happy circumstance of geography. It is compounded of one part proximity and nine parts good will and common sense.
Harry S. Truman
#55. The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want.
Harry S. Truman
#56. 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
#57. 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.
Harry S. Truman
#58. I think the only person a writer has an obligation to is himself. If what I write doesn't fulfill something in me, if I don't honestly feel it's the best I can do, then I'm miserable.
Truman Capote
#59. The record proves that in peaceful commerce the combined efforts of our countries can produce outstanding results. Our trade with each other is far greater than that of any other two nations on earth.
Harry S. Truman
#60. The Republican Party either corrupts its liberals or it expels them.
Harry S. Truman
#63. The America to which these Swedish settlers came was a land that needed the hardy qualities they brought. It was not a land that was particularly softhearted towards newcomers, but everyone believed that each should have a fair chance regardless of his origin.
Harry S. Truman
#64. The important thing is that the President be saved from his friends. Bill Hassett urged Truman to rid himself of Boyle without delay. "Your friends will destroy you," Hassett pleaded. "It's all right, Bill," Truman said, as if trying to calm a child. "It's all right." Truman
David McCullough
#65. Where are you, Fred? Because it's cold. There's snow in the wind.
Truman Capote
#67. On the one hand X is true, but on the other hand, Y is true," Harry S. Truman is reported to have muttered in frustration, "Get me a one-armed economist!
Hal Herzog
#68. 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.
Harry S. Truman
#69. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, or Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.
Harry S. Truman
#70. Reading dreams. That's what started her walking down the road. Every day she'd walk a little further: a mile, and come home. Two miles, and come home. One day she just kept on.
Truman Capote
#71. A leader has to lead otherwise he has no business in politics.
Harry S. Truman
#72. But that's impossible. Can you imagine Mr. Clutter missing church? Just to sleep?
Truman Capote
#73. Brazil was beastly but Buenos Aires the best. Not Tiffany's, but almost.
Truman Capote
#75. Hack, hack, hack. I wouldn't pay twenty-five cents to spit on a Georgia O'Keeffe painting. And I think she's a horrible person, too. I know her ... So arrogant, so sure of herself. I'm sure she's carrying a dildo in her purse.
Truman Capote
#76. I have had enough experience in all my years, and have read enough of the past, to know that advice to grandchildren is usually wasted.
Harry S. Truman
#77. Yes: but aren't love and marriage notoriously synonymous in the minds of most women? Certainly very few men get the first without promising the second: love, that is
if it's just a matter of spreading her legs, almost any woman will do that for nothing.
Truman Capote
#78. It isn't important who is ahead at one time or another, in either an election or a horse race.
It's the horse that comes in first at the finish that counts
Harry S. Truman
#79. The true foundation of the brotherhood of humankind is belief in the knowledge that God is the Father of humankind. For us, therefore, brotherhood is not only a generous impulse but also a divine command.
Harry S. Truman
#80. Children and dogs are as necessary to the welfare of the country as Wall Street and the railroads.
Harry S. Truman
#81. Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, On the one hand on the other.
Harry S. Truman
#82. We must help to the limits of our strength. And we will.
Harry S. Truman
#83. What is today?"
"Thursday."
"Thursday." She stood up. "My God," she said, and sat down again with a moan. "It's too gruesome.
Truman Capote
#84. As you get older, you get tired of doing the same things over and over again, so you think Christmas has changed. It hasn't. It's you who has changed.
Harry S. Truman
#85. The United States has become great because we, as a people, have been able to work together for great objectives even while differing about details.
Harry S. Truman
#86. 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.
Harry S. Truman
#88. If we do not abolish war on this earth, then surely one day war will abolish us from the earth.
Harry S. Truman
#91. Too many?pass judgement on wartime decisions in the luxury of a peacetime environment.
Harry S. Truman
#92. If you don't have your own goals, you'll be doomed to work toward someone else's.
Harry S. Truman
#93. Whenever a man does the best he can, then that is all he can do.
Harry S. Truman
#94. Let's don't say another word. let's just go to sleep ...
Truman Capote
#95. My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference.
Harry Truman
#96. All my life I have fought against prejudice and intolerance.
Harry S. Truman
#97. Whenever the press quits abusing me, I know I'm in the wrong pew.
Harry S. Truman
#98. Remember that thing Truman Capote said years ago about Jack Kerouac: "That's not writing, it's typing"? I keep thinking that what we do now, with this medium of instant delivery, isn't writing, and doesn't even qualify as typing either: it's just sending.
Lynne Truss
#99. An optimist is presented with a problem and sees an opportunity. A pessimist is presented with an opportunity and sees a problem.
Harry S. Truman
#100. 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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