17 Harry S. Truman Quotes on Politics

Harry S. Truman quotes on politics

4. 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, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances. Neither of them thinks anything of their pledged word.

5. Tell him to go to hell; I'm for Jimmy Byrnes.

6. Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me. I've got the most terribly responsible job a man ever had.

8. No government is perfect. One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected.

10. Had ten minutes conversation with Henry Morgenthau about Jewish ship in Palistine. Told him I would talk to Gen[eral] Marshall about it. He'd no business, whatever to call me. The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement on world affairs. Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed. When the country went backward - and Republican in the election of 1946, this incident loomed large on the DP [Displaced Person] program. The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as DP as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes. Look at the Congress[ional] attitude on DP - and they all come from DPs.

11. The people can never understand why the President does not use his powers to make them behave. Well 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.

12. Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make these Republicans like it - don't forget that! We will do that because they are wrong and we are right, and I will prove it to you in just a few minutes.

15. On the one hand, the Republicans are telling industrial workers that the high cost of food in the cities is due to this government's farm policy. On the other hand, the Republicans are telling the farmers that the high cost of manufactured goods on the farm is due to this government's labor policy. That's plain hokum. It's an old political trick: 'If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em.' But this time it won't work.

18. A politician is a man who understands government, and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years.

19. Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

20. 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!

23. He's 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.

29. In this shrinking world, it is futile to seek safety behind geographical barriers. Real security will be found only in law and in justice. Here in America, we have labored long and hard to achieve a social order worthy of our great heritage. In our time, tremendous progress has been made toward a really democratic way of life. Let me assure the forward-looking people of America that there will be no relaxation in our efforts to improve the lot of the common people.

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

44. 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.

45. The job of the Vice President is to go to weddings and funerals.

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