A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead ten or fifteen years.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

A president either is constantly on top of events or, if he hesitates, events will soon be on top of him. I never felt that I could let up for a moment.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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

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 Quote

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

I have no desire to crow over anybody or to see anybody eating crow, figuratively or otherwise. We should all get together and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

I've said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!
- Harry S. Truman Quote

If I hadn't been President of the United States, I probably would have ended up a piano player in a bawdy house.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

If I'd known how much packing I'd have to do, I'd have run again.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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

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.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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 S. Truman Quote

Nixon is one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

The atom bomb was no "great decision." It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

The buck stops here!
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

The reward of suffering is experience.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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

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 Quote

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.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

Whenever a fellow tells me he's bipartisan, I know he's going to vote against me.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don't believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

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.
- Harry S. Truman Quote

You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.
- Harry S. Truman Quote