Harry S. Truman - President Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

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I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them … that's all the powers of the President amount to.

Harry S. Truman
He was a great president in his first term; in his second term, he wasn't the same Grover Cleveland he was to begin with....Cleveland reestablished the presidency by being not only a chief executive but a leader.

Harry S. Truman
I enjoyed my new position as vice president, but it took me a while to get used to the fact that I no longer had the voting privileges I had enjoyed for 10 years as a senator.

Harry S. Truman
It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale.

Harry S. Truman
The Committee is authorized on behalf of the President to examine into the rules, procedures and practices of the Armed Services in order to determine in what respect such rules, procedures and practices may be altered or improved with a view to carrying out the policy of this order. The Committee shall confer and advise the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of the Air Force, and shall make such recommendations to the President and to said Secretaries as in the judgment of the Committee will effectuate the policy hereof.

Harry S. Truman
The people can never understand why the President does not use his powers to make them behave. Well 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
In my opinion eight years as president is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in that capacity.

Harry S. Truman
Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed. The fantastically crowded nine months of 1945 taught me that a President either is constantly on top of events or, if he hesitates, events will soon be on top of him. I never felt I could let up for a single moment.

Harry S. Truman
They couldn't include me in it because I was the President, and I can be elected as often as I want to be. I'm going to run again when I'm ninety. I've announced that a time or two, and you know, some damn fool looked the situation over and said, "When you're ninety, it's an off year," so I can't even run then. I didn't know I was going to stir up all that trouble...

Harry S. Truman
The president is the representative of the whole nation, and he's the only lobbyist that all the 160 million people in this country have.

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

Harry S. Truman
Some of the presidents were great and some of them weren't. I can say that, because I wasn't one of the great presidents, but I had a good time trying to be one, I can tell you that.

Harry S. Truman
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
I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president. That's the answer to that. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.
Of General Douglas MacArthur

Harry S. Truman
No one who has not had the responsibility can really understand what it is like to be President, not even his closest aides or members of his immediate family. There is no end to the chain of responsibility that binds him, and he is never allowed to forget that he is President.

Harry S. Truman
There are 14 or 15 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of the other people — the 150 or 160 million — is the responsibility of the president of the United States, and I propose to fulfill it.

Harry S. Truman
There shall be created in the National Military Establishment an advisory committee to be known as the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, which shall be composed of seven members to be designated by the President.

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

Harry S. Truman
When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn't for you. It's for the Presidency.

Harry S. Truman
The Committee shall continue to exist until such time as the President shall terminate its existence by Executive order.

Harry S. Truman
My father was not a failure. After all, he was the father of a president of the United States.

Harry S. Truman