Quotes from Harry S Truman

Washington is a very easy city for you to forget where you came from and why you got there in the first place.

It sure is hell to be president.

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

A President cannot always be popular.

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

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 White House is the finest prison in the world.

Most of the problems a President has to face have their roots in the past.

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

Carry the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don't ever apologize for anything.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

You and I are stuck with the necessity of taking the worst of two evils or none at all. So-I'm taking the immature Democrat as the best of the two. Nixon is impossible.

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

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.

I would rather have peace in the world than be President.

When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth - then all Americans are in peril.

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