Top 300 Harry S. Truman Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “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

152. “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

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

— Harry S. Truman

154. “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

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

— Harry S. Truman

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

— Harry S. Truman

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

— Harry S. Truman

158. “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

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

— Harry S. Truman

160. “I have little patience with people who take the Bill of Rights for granted. The Bill of Rights, contained in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, is every American’s guarantee of freedom.”

— Harry S. Truman

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

— Harry S. Truman

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

— Harry S. Truman

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

— Harry S. Truman

164. “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

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

— Harry S. Truman

166. “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

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

— Harry S. Truman

168. “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

169. “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

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. “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

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

— Harry S. Truman

173. “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

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

— Harry S. Truman

175. “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

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

— Harry S. Truman

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

— Harry S. Truman

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

— Harry S. Truman

179. “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

180. “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

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

— Harry S. Truman

182. “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

183. “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

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

— Harry S. Truman

185. “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

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

— Harry S. Truman

187. “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

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

— Harry S. Truman

189. “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

190. “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

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

— Harry S. Truman

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

— Harry S. Truman

193. “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

194. “Andrew Johnson wasn’t too bad, but he was overwhelmed by a hostile Congress.”

— Harry S. Truman

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

— Harry S. Truman

196. “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

197. “It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace.”

— Harry S. Truman

198. “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

199. “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

200. “The most peaceful thing in the world is plowing a field. Chances are you’ll do your best thinking that way. And that’s why I’ve always thought and said, farmers are the smartest people in the world, they don’t go for high hats and they can spot a phony a mile off.”

— Harry S. Truman