Quotes By Harry S. Truman

If you can't convince them, confuse them.

Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it.

Washington is a very easy city for you to forget where you came from and why you got there in the first place.

All my life, whenever it comes time to make a decision, I make it and forget about it.

The White House is the finest prison in the world.

Study men, not historians.

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.

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.

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.

Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.

You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.

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

Whenever a fellow tells me he's bipartisan, I know he's going to vote against me.

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 United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members.

The reward of suffering is experience.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.

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.

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

The best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

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.

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.