Top 300 Harry S. Truman Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Everybody has the right to express what he thinks. That, of course, lets the crackpots in. But if you cannot tell a crackpot when you see one, then you ought to be taken in.”

— Harry S. Truman

152. “A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a leader.”

— Harry S. Truman

153. “I have to decide Japanese strategy – shall we invade Japan proper or shall we bomb and blockade? That is my hardest decision to date. But I’ll make it when I have all the facts.”

— Harry S. Truman

154. “May the sun never set on American baseball.”

— Harry S. Truman

155. “A person who is fundamentally honest doesn’t need a code of ethics. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are all the ethical code anybody needs.”

— Harry S. Truman

156. “It’s plain hokum. If you can’t convince ’em, confuse ’em. It’s an old political trick. But this time it won’t work.”

— Harry S. Truman

157. “The most peaceful thing in the world is plowing a field. Chances are you’ll do your best thinking that way.”

— Harry S. Truman

158. “The Republicans believe in the minimum wage – the more the minimum, the better.”

— Harry S. Truman

159. “I think there is an immense shortage of Christian charity among so-called Christians.”

— Harry S. Truman

160. “All my life I have fought against prejudice and intolerance.”

— Harry S. Truman

161. “We all have to recognise, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the licence to do always as we please.”

— Harry S. Truman

162. “Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.”

— Harry S. Truman

163. “I believe in the brotherhood of man, not merely the brotherhood of white men but the brotherhood of all men before law.”

— Harry S. Truman

164. “A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who’s been dead for 15 years.”

— Harry S. Truman

165. “People are very much wrought up about the Communist bugaboo.”

— Harry S. Truman

166. “The responsibility of the great states is to serve, and not to dominate, the world.”

— Harry S. Truman

167. “But Quantrill and his men were no more bandits than the men on the other side. I’ve been to reunions of Quantrill’s men two or three times. All they were trying to do was protect the property on the Missouri side of the line...”

— Harry S. Truman

168. “The absence of war is not peace.”

— Harry S. Truman

169. “Everybody is headed for the same place, and they are headed on the same train, and under the same engineer.”

— Harry S. Truman

170. “The United States should not under any circumstances throw away our gun until we are sure the rest of the world cannot arm against us.”

— Harry S. Truman

171. “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

172. “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.”

— Harry S. Truman

173. “If we do not abolish war on this earth, then surely one day war will abolish us from the earth.”

— Harry S. Truman

174. “We can never tell what is in store for us.”

— Harry S. Truman

175. “The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.”

— Harry S. Truman

176. “With firm faith in our hearts, to sustain us along the hard road to victory, we will find our way to a secure peace, for the ultimate benefit of all humanity.”

— Harry S. Truman

177. “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

178. “It is ignorance that causes most mistakes.”

— Harry S. Truman

179. “The dictators of the world say that if you tell a lie often enough, why, people will believe it. Well, if you tell the truth often enough, they’ll believe it and go along with you.”

— Harry S. Truman

180. “At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.”

— Harry S. Truman

181. “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

182. “How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt?”

— Harry S. Truman

183. “Justice remains the greatest power on earth. To that tremendous power alone will we submit.”

— Harry S. Truman

184. “You know of our sympathetic interest in this country in Iran’s desire to control its natural resources. From this point of view we were happy to see that the British Government has on its part accepted the principle of nationalization.”

— Harry S. Truman

185. “The President hears a hundred voices telling him that he is the greatest man in the world. He must listen carefully indeed to hear the one voice that tells him his is not.”

— Harry S. Truman

186. “There is a lure in power. It can get into a man’s blood just as gambling and lust for money have been known to do.”

— Harry S. Truman

187. “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

188. “Why, this fellow doesn’t know any more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday.”

— Harry S. Truman

189. “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

190. “You members of this Conference are to be the architects of the better world. In your hands rests our future.”

— Harry S. Truman

191. “I don’t feel qualified to be president either, but I’ve got the job.”

— Harry S. Truman

192. “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

193. “Poor Ike. He’ll say do this and do that and nothing at all will happen.”

— Harry S. Truman

194. “Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court he ceases to be your friend.”

— Harry S. Truman

195. “France is France and a grand place for Frenchman.”

— Harry S. Truman

196. “When the Liberals said they were going to create a million new jobs, I didn’t think they were all going to be tax collectors. If you can’t convince them, confuse them.”

— Harry S. Truman

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

— Harry S. Truman

198. “This is a Christian nation.”

— Harry S. Truman

199. “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

200. “It’s not the hand that signs the laws that holds the destiny of America. It’s the hand that casts the ballot.”

— Harry S. Truman