Harry S. Truman - States Quotes

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It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to insure that all Americans enjoy these rights. When I say all Americans, I mean all Americans.

Harry S. Truman
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
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.

Harry S. Truman
The United States is not so strong, the final triumph of the democratic ideal is not so inevitable that we can ignore what the world thinks of us or our record.

Harry S. Truman
I am not worried about the Communist Party taking over the Government of the United States, but I am against a person, whose loyalty is not to the Government of the United States, holding a Government job. They are entirely different things. I am not worried about this country ever going Communist. We have too much sense for that.

Harry S. Truman
When Kansas and Colorado have a quarrel over the water in the Arkansas River they don't call out the National Guard in each state and go to war over it. They bring a suit in the Supreme Court of the United States and abide by the decision. There isn't a reason in the world why we cannot do that internationally.

Harry S. Truman
The United States has a tremendous responsibility to act according to the measure of our power for good in the world. We have learned that we must earn the peace we seek just as we earned victory in the war, not by wishful thinking but by realistic effort. At no time in our history has unity among our people been so vital as it is at the present time. Unity of purpose, unity of effort, and unity of spirit are essential to accomplish the task before us.

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
I had carefully read the Balfour Declaration. I had familiarized myself with the history of the question of a Jewish homeland and the position of the British and the Arabs. I was skeptical, as I read over the whole record up to date, about some of the views and attitudes assumed by the 'striped-pants boys' in the State Department.

Harry S. Truman
The British, Chinese, and United States Governments have given the Japanese people adequate warning of what is in store for them. We have laid down the general terms on which they can surrender. Our warning went unheeded; our terms were rejected. Since then the Japanese have seen what our atomic bomb can do. They can foresee what it will do in the future.

Harry S. Truman
The recommendations I have made represent the most urgent steps toward securing the peace and preventing war. We must be ready to take every wise and necessary step to carry out this great purpose. This will require assistance to other nations. It will require an adequate and balanced military strength. We must be prepared to pay the price for peace, or assuredly we shall pay the price of war. We in the United States remain determined to seek peace by every possible means, a just and honorable basis for the settlement of international issues.

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
If wars in the future are to be prevented the nations must be united in their determination to keep the peace under law.
Nothing is more essential to the future peace of the world than continued cooperation of the nations which had to muster the force necessary to defeat the conspiracy of the Axis powers to dominate the world.
While these great states have a special responsibility to enforce the peace, their responsibility is based upon the obligations resting upon all states, large and small, not to use force in international relations except in the defense of law. The responsibility of the great states is to serve and not to dominate the world.

Harry S. Truman
Canada and the United States have reached the point where we no longer think of each other as 'foreign' countries. We think of each other as friends, as peaceful and cooperative neighbors on a spacious and fruitful continent.

Harry S. Truman
We seek a peaceful world, a prosperous world, a free world, a world of good neighbors, living on terms of equality and mutual respect, as Canada and the United States have lived for generations.

Harry S. Truman
You know, the United States Government turns its Chief Executive out to grass. They're just allowed to starve... If I hadn't inherited some property that finally paid things through, I'd be on relief now.

Harry S. Truman
This government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested by the provisional government thereof. The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel.

Harry S. Truman
Dictatorship, by whatever name, is founded on the doctrine that the individual amounts to nothing; that the State is the only one that counts; and that men and women and children were put on earth solely for the purpose of serving the state.

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
The atomic bomb is too dangerous to be loose in a lawless world. That is why Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, who have the secret of its production, do not intend to reveal that secret until means have been found to control the bomb so as to protect ourselves and the rest of the world from the danger of total destruction.

Harry S. Truman