I have always admired Harry Truman for his plainspoken common sense, his zero tolerance policy for bullshit, his sharp wit, and blunt honesty. It’s too bad we don’t have a president like him today. Truman was the last president not to have a college degree, but he was in no way uneducated. A lifelong, avid reader, he was self-educated and could have easily run intellectual circles around the present resident of the White House. He also has the distinction of being the last president who did not leave the presidency as a millionaire. Here is a list of 25 Truman quotes.
Quotes 1 – 5
1. There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.
2. The buck stops here.
3. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
4. A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants
5. 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.
Quotes 6 – 10
6. Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.
7. Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.
8. 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.
9. I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.
10. 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.
Quotes 11 – 15
11. It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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.
Quotes 16 – 20
16. 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.
17. The Republicans believe in the minimum wage — the more the minimum, the better.
18. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Republican. But I repeat myself.
19. Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought.
20. Republicans don’t like people who talk about depressions. You can hardly blame them for that. You remember the old saying: Don’t talk about rope in the house where somebody has been hanged.
Quotes 21 – 25
21. These polls that the Republican candidate is putting out are like sleeping pills designed to lull the voters into sleeping on election day. You might call them sleeping polls.
22. Herbert Hoover once ran on the slogan, “Two cars in every garage”. Apparently, the Republican candidate this year is running on the slogan, “Two families in every garage”.
23. Any denial of human rights is a denial of the basic beliefs of democracy.
24. There isn’t any doubt that a woman would make a good president. They make good senators, good members of the House of Representatives, and have held other important offices in the government of the United States.
25. I do not understand a mind which sees a gracious beneficence in spending money to slay and maim human beings in almost unimaginable numbers and deprecates the expenditure of a smaller sum to patch up the ills of mankind.
Contributor: Libertine
wow cool list, I had no Idea that He was the one that first said #2 and 3
I don’t get number 2, but number 3 is awesome!!
SubliminalDeath666:
#2, the Buck Stops Here, was one of his big phrases. You’ve heard the phrase ‘passing the buck’, or giving the problem to someone else rather than dealing with it. His ‘the buck stops here’ was the idea that he wouldn’t pass it further. He would take care of the problem.
“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Republican. But I repeat myself.”
This made me spill apple juice all over my keyboard.
I didn’t realise 3 was Truman’s.
I guess he was a Democrat then
He was such a brillient man.
didn’t realise he said number 3, it’s such an everdyay quote nowadays
I take it Truman didnt like Nixon?
These are great quotes! I hadn’t heard most of them, and the ones I had heard I didn’t know were attributed to him. Very nice, thanks for sharing.
These are some great quotes.
This is when Democrats were Democrats.
Many people in the last 25 years did not leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left them.
Of course Truman also said : “If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible…”.
And he is the only world leader to have sanctioned an actual nuclear strike.
I guess I am not his biggest fan.
Oh, and quote #18 is a bastardisation of a Samuel Clemens witticism.
Isn’t the picture of the man with the John Deere hat holding a glass the Harry Truman that died in the Mt St Helens eruption in 1980?
hg8057: I didn’t remember that a Harry Truman died in that eruption, but I was thinking that that picture wasn’t the same person as the other photos.
there is a problem w/ the photo and i’ve notified J. just be patient and it’ll get fixed.
thanks!
Hindsight is always 20/20. You must take into account that Truman didn’t have the 60+ years of additional history to work with as you do.
As far as the nuclear strike goes, this decision was made after much careful consideration. Unlike the Germans, the Japanese did not surrender once it was clear that a battle was lost — they fought to the last man. Thus casualty levels were typically much higher than in the European theater. Military experts estimated the expected level of casualties if the taking of the main islands of Japan was conducted using conventional warfare and it was much, much greater, combining American and Japanese losses, than the totals of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also would have likely extended World War II until at least 1947.
Perhaps Truman would not have made this decision if he had sixty more years of history to work with, but who knows? He did what he thought was best with the information he had to work with at the time.
1. Truman would/should have known about radiation that comes from a nuclear blast. You dont require 60 years of history to know about it
2. The talk about casualty levels, i am assuming you are quoting McGeorge Bundy? He himself admitted that he simply pulled off a figure from thin air to justify the bombings. And no..he was no “military expert”
3. Dont really know about how much of a careful consideration was taken before bombing them, but more bombs were lined up had Japan not surrendered..which meant that Truman was willing to literally destroy Japan..this goes against the “casualty level” claim..because no matter what..the casualty levels would have been far greater than if the war had been fought in a more conventional manner
4. Finally almost all Americans and majority of others believe that it was the bombings that led to the Japanese surrender…thats just American propaganda to justify the post bombing horrors…it was the entry of Soviet Union that forced Japan to surrender
May be he was a great man…may be he was a great leader…but he made a mistake with the bombings…and he made it even when he knew what would happen…
Good call hg8057. You can read about the other Harry Truman HERE
Sorry try this
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/May18/MSHThisWeek/32944/truman.jpg&imgrefurl=http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/May18/MSHThisWeek/32944/32944.htm&h=301&w=281&sz=28&hl=en&start=1&sig2=idWz6kWsnoGnu8Yy34tJGw&tbnid=FEKIXxhZC0SOAM:&tbnh=116&tbnw=108&ei=ZWppR7GaM6WkgQLT6JGDDg&prev=/images%3Fq%3DHarry%2BTruman%2BMt%2BSt%2BHelen%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX
my apologies for the photo error – I will fix it when I land somewhere
nearly time to board the plane.
I know next to nothing about American history, but this guy seems well cool (I say that tentatively, not knowing anything about the chap)
Good list!
Hey Jamie, I got a good list idea for christmas: Top 10 or 20 (if you can) Gifts for 2007 for Men then another one for Women, children, etc. Does that sound good?
I know it does…. Lol!
Safe flight, Jamie!
Libertine, I’m not sure that hindsight provides a famework that justifies Truman’s decision to drop the nukes on non-military targets ?
Your comment that the decision was made “after much careful consideration” is deserving of scrutiny. Truman is on the record as having said moral considerations never entered his thinking process and that he made the decision “just like that” (snapping his fingers).
In another list, you said #3 was wrongly attributed to him; rather, Harry Vaughn. You may want to clarify that he was quoting someone. But otherwise, it’s good to have a good sense of humour in politics. These days no one takes risks (at least not on purpose).
Based solely on these quotes, I really don’t like him, at all. But then again, he was a politician, and they’re rather difficult to be fond of. However, after reading this quote, only one thing sprang to mind:
“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.”
Legalize it. xD (Couldn’t resist, I’m not even a pothead. It just seemed perfect.)
This is an interesting skim: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/bennettf.htm
It states that in 1931 a judge, Buck Purcell said this first and then in 1934 Truman heard this from a friends mother after Truman commented on how hot it was in the kitchen.
Not sure what is correct, but many quotes are often credited to the wrong person or misquoted.
If Truman were in politics today he would be a republican, probably much to his dismay.
are you kidding! have you seen the republicans today?
Many lives would have been lost in a full scale invasion of Japan. But they would have been, for the most part, soldiers who were choosing to die for their countries. Not women and children cooking breakfast and going about their daily lives. The bombs on Japan were cowardly.
Jamie…thanks for the quotes. I’m rather fond of Truman for reasons very similar to yours. Think any leaders of the last few years would have the cojones to stand up to Macarthur, right or wrong, to remind him that the buck DOES stop with the President? Truman may have fired Macarthur, but we don’t seem to learn in schools that he HIRED George Marshall.
kiwiboi…if you don’t like Truman, you don’t like Truman, but HST’s feelings and decision-making regarding Hiroshima/Nagasaki are covered pretty well in David McCullough’s “Truman”, which I think is THE quintessential HST book (I also recommend Ralph Keyes’s “The Wit and Wisdom of Harry S. Truman.”). Great biography, and you’ll find that Truman was just an average, ordinary guy who found himself doing the best he could in an extraordinary position. He also got the ball rolling on civil rights, something that isn’t mentioned about him very often.
Incidentally, speaking of Harry Truman the President and Harry Truman the Volcano Victim, I once encountered a guy named Laurie Appleton who claimed to have walked around St. Helen’s with “past president Harry Truman,” years after the President had died. Mr. Appleton, from the Land Down Under, didn’t seem to realize that they were two different people.
QDV — I wrote this list….those reasons for liking Truman were mine.
Just wondering how we are supposed to know who is writing the lists we read?
Never mind I see it at the end
To those of you who don’t like him because he sanctioned nukes:
1. Civilians were already being slaughtered, by both sides, in both theatres. (Dresden, Tokyo, Nanking, etc.) Many more so with conventional weapons than with nukes.
2. Scientists were unaware of the true dangers of radiation, fallout, etc.
3. Truman was unaware that the bomb existed until months after he was elected. When given the option, he used it. (again, unaware of collateral damage.)
4. It took 2 atomic bombs to force the Japanese to concede. Leaflets were dropped warning civilians to evacuate. The Japanese government was warned that we had a weapon that could destroy an entire city. These warnings were ignored.
5. There are no ‘civilians’ when your entire culture is taught that death is preferable to surrender. An invasion of Japan would have been a bloodbath, with millions of casualties on both sides. Women and children included.
1. That is no justification for killing even more civilians. Do you even realize that your example can be used to justify even genocide? After all the Americans themselves did it…so Hitler/Saddam and countless others were not criminals?
2. While the exact danger of radiation was indeed not known, it was known that radiation did pose a health risk.
3. No problems with this…but dont try to make him/US as a saint like they dropped the bombs because they wanted to save Japanese lives
4. Completely BS comment. Japan did not surrender because of the bombs. They surrendered because Soviet Union entered the war in the Pacific. And one of the reasons for dropping the bombs was because the US did not want Soviet domination of Japan like in Germany. And no…US did not specifically warn about the bomb…the Postdam declaration just mentioned “prompt and utter destruction.” Finally, the leaflets were dropped AFTER the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and when US started getting ready to drop more bombs on other cities
5. So you are going to consider the elderly, the infants as soldiers? Invasion of Japan may or may not have been a bloodbath. The “millions of casualties” claim was from a guy who later admitted that he just pulled out a figure to justify the bombings.
As i said above. US had a weapon that could have saved AMERICAN lives and they used it. No problems with that. But dont try to project it as another “sacrifice” by the country during the war that they “won” with just over 400,000 soldiers while the other countries were waiting for their “saviour”:-)
Contributor: Libertine
is directly beneath the final # of the list.
if a contributor IS NOT noted you can assume one of two things:
J (jfrater site owner) wrote it.
or the person who did either chose not to have their name listed or stated no preference that their name be listed.
btw…you can always ask in comments if its not clear to you.
Yar:
1. Slaughtering civilians with conventional weapons justifies slaughtering them with nukes??!?!?
2. Regardless of radiation, they knew it would turn a city full of civilians into a fireball.
3. Potsdam Declaration: “Prompt & Utter Destruction” = Truman knew damn well he wasn’t just lighting a firecracker.
4. Does warning someone that you are going to punch them in the face justify you punching them in the face??? What kind of logic is that?
5. If the entire Japanese culture was prepared to fight to the death, why did they surrender? If they really believed what you are saying, they would have let their entire country be razed to the ground.
p.s. Harry Potter Rules
He was the man
I’m so happy he said that stuff…i mean really…***** Richard Nixon..he was a *****ty human being…and a *****ty president.
I work in the city that Richard Nixon was born and buried in; Yorba Linda, California. I get the heeby jeebies every time I drive to work.
“4. Does warning someone that you are going to punch them in the face justify you punching them in the face??? What kind of logic is that?”
In war…yeah, it kind of does.
Hey Floyd: That’s why the first nuke didn’t go to Tokyo- If the Emperor and the government had been killed, they would never have surrendered and would have had to be killed to the man. The Japanese government didn’t want to surrender. It was the Emperor who finally made that happen.
Yeah, if you’re holding a knife and I’m holding a gun, and I tell you to put it down or I’ll shoot, that knife better be falling with the quickness. I will follow through. It’s that kind of logic.
And yes, Harry Potter does rule.
Oh yeah, and though it is a matter or moral relativity, killing thousands in one stroke is, in my mind, better than causing the injury and death of millions more.
Would you rather lose $5 or $50,000?
While I agree that dropping a nuclear bomb is a horrible thing to do, the other option, was even more horrid. It was estimated that over a million american soldiers would of died in an invasion of the Japanese homeland, and something like 9 millions japanese civilians would of been killed. It was a horrible decision that had to be made and I think it was made correctly.
And yes, the Japanese were determined to fight to the very last man, woman and child…That was until they realised that they could be destroyed without ever even being able to fight back.
Pretty good list, Libertine. While I think that Truman was a good president, and a smart man, he loses points in my book for the blatant ani-republican attitude. I feel the same way about republicans who bad mouth democrats. For the record, I am a republican, and I try to ever aviod voting/supporting other republicans who result to degrading members of the opposite party.
I love Harry Truman. My father, stepfather and father-in-law were all slated to go with the initial invasion of Japan. Truman more than likely saved my life and my son’s.
Japan’s average citizen most certainly would not have fought to the death, and an invasion would not have been necessary. A strict naval blockade and constant conventional bombing runs would have left them begging for surrender {hunger always outweighs honor} Russia was preparing to enter that theater, so I’m confident in saying that a full surrender would have been very likely after a year or two. The bomb was just us *****ing in the sand, telling Stalin not to mess with us in Europe.
Well said Veranunca. Yarr could learn a thing or two from you.
I don’t doubt, Veranunca, that it was also a way for us to flex our muscles at Russia, but it was the quickest solution to end the bloodiest war in history.
Also, if we would of allowed Russia to enter the theater the death toll would of been even greater. Look at the millions of german citiens they killed marching to Berlin. Plus Russia already had a bone to pick with Japan after the Japanese kicked them out of China in the early 1900s.
It is easy to nit-pick at decisions that were made 60 years ago, when emotions have died down and nerves arent strained. I do think there is oen good thing to come out of dropping the atom bomb though. Seeing what it was capable of has prevented it from ever being used offensively again. And as stated before, Japan was warned what would happen if they did not surrender, hell, they wouldn’teven surrender after the first one was dropped, THAT is the kind of attitude they had. When it becomes a number game between the death toll of the enemy, and the death toll of our own countrymen and allies, guess who wins?
PeteFloyd (#34): “4. Does warning someone that you are going to punch them in the face justify you punching them in the face??? What kind of logic is that?”
Thats wrong. To use that *****ogy, they were saying ‘our fist is going in this direction, if you dont move, you will get hit, but you can if move if you want to’
I certainly hate atomic weapons, however;
Nuclear bombs were invented. Eventually they would have been used. When they were dropped on Japan, everyone learned how much damage they could do, and became afraid. If not Japan in 1945 the first time might have been in Korea in ’52, or Vietnam, or the Soviet Union might have decided to have more than just a “cold war” with the U.S. in the 1960′s by being the first to use one. Also Germany was developing the bomb. They might have been the first to use one by dropping it on the U.S. if they weren’t deterred by seeing the U.S. use it first.
Floyd and Veranunca:
Stalin knew about the bomb. In fact, he probably knew about it before Truman did.
Japan’s average citizen would have very well gouged out their own eyes with a spoon if that’s what their Emperor told them to do.
And, Japan had been bombed pretty regularly since the beginning of the war. They were nowhere near surrender, truce, or anything like it. Russia wasn’t about to help with an invasion. They were there to help China get rid of the Japanese. In China. And they were doing just that when Little Boy was dropped.
What is it I could learn from Veranunca?
That if we just kept doing what we had been doing for 4 years with little or no effect would have just ‘worked’ one day? Ok, sure.
It would have been only a matter of time before someone used a nuclear weapon. Better to use one to end a war than to begin one.
If we are cleaning the grains, we also lost some of the good ones.
One thing to remember is that Japan surrendered after the bomb because their Emperor decided that he didn’t want any more lives lost. And even then, after he had made his decision there was an attempted coup that almost succeded by officers who wanted to continue the war. It was that close to being prolonged. And to the guys that said that merely a naval blockade and conventional bombing would have worked, you’re forgetting that they did that. Far more people were killed in conventional bombing in Japan then by the nukes. And the average Joe would have fought to the death were he told to, in general their armed forces were just average people with little to no training by this point in the war and look at what they did at Iwo Jima, Saipan, Tarawa, and countless other islands. They would have fought to the death, except that they saw this new, powerful, and frighteningly unknown weapon being used against them and one of them decided that enough was enough.
That was horrible when Mt. St. Helens killed him.
okay – FINALLY I have fixed the image of Harry Truman – sorry about that guys – though at least you all got to talking about the other Harry Truman
Veranunca,
Hiroshima was absolutely a warning to the Soviet Union. It was chosen, among other reasons, because its design and construction most closely resembled a European or Russian city. Causing a normal Japanese city to burn had proved to be rather easy so the American military felt it was necessary to provide a more Western example.
While the nuking of an inhabited city seems excessive, is it any worse than the fire bombing of Tokyo, Coventry or Dresden? The bottom line is that it’s very easy in 2007 with our chances of getting killed in an invasion somewhat less than zero to second guess Truman’s decision to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If Japan or Germany had been a little quicker with their atomic projects, things may have turned out very differently. I’d like to hear from the people who lived in Nan King, Warsaw, Vilnius, Coventry or Paris at the time if things didn’t work out just fine they way they did.
Attacking Japan with the arms developed in the Manhattan Project was so the Soviet Union wouldn’t be the ones capturing and occupying Japan. It wasn’t really a warning as it was Truman wasn’t as “friendly” with Stalin as Roosevelt was. Roosevelt knew that Stalin had a full house but couldn’t put all his chips in because he was losing heavily already.
Remember before George HW Bush, Al Gore and Dick Cheney the Vice President was there as a fail safe, he wasn’t as heavily involved in executive affairs like the last couple of VP’s we’ve had. Hell, Kissinger knew more than Ford did in the last bit of Nixon’s reign. Truman was in the blind, hadn’t been working with FDR for the last 12 years, he did what he was dealt with and he chose the quickest way to end it.
I’m not saying Truman’s the greatest, but he held his own (then and in retrospect) after entering office behind a great, possibly the greatest, US president. I put more emphasis on what he started that eventually blew up in Vietnam with his “Truman Doctrine” and the “Marshall Plans”.
Truman then would be like having George Carlin in the presidency now, he was a different politician. And saying Truman would be a Republican today is like saying Kucinich or Pelosi would have been Republicans in Lincoln’s time. Every forty years or so either a new political party becomes one of the big two or they seem to switch on several ideals.
i love quote number 1. as a history major, i know that this is so true. You could spend your entire life devoted to even just a decade of some point in history. I’ve given up my aspirations of knowing everything in history long ago.