Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here.
~ Harry S Truman
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.
Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.
My father was not a failure. After all, he was the father of a president of the United States.
If you can't convince them, confuse them.
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.
The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members.
The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.
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.
There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.
The Marine Corps is the Navy's police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's.
The reward of suffering is experience.
America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.
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.
I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.
Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.
I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.
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.
In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves... self-discipline with all of them came first.
The atom bomb was no 'great decision.' It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.
A President cannot always be popular.
Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.
A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a leader.
You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.
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.
A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.
A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for 15 years.
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.
Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought.
It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow's viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.
I would rather have peace in the world than be President.
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.
