H S Truman Quotes

If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country he [Harry Truman] would have promised to provide them with free missionaries, fattened at the taxpayers’ expense.

The reason is that the people know that the Democratic Party is the people’s party, and the Republican Party is the party of special interest, and it always has been and always will be.

Know what I think?" said Perry. "I think there must be something wrong with us. To do what we did."' "Did what?" "Out there." Dick dropped the binoculars into a leather case, a luxurious receptacle initialed H. W. C. He was annoyed. Annoyed as hell. Why the hell couldn't Perry shut up? Christ Jesus, what damn good did it do, always dragging the goddam thing up? It really was annoying. Especially since they'd agreed, sort of, not to talk about the goddam thing. Just forget it. "There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing like that," Perry said. "Deal me out, baby," Dick said. "I'm a normal." And Dick meant what he said. He thought himself as balanced, as sane as anyone - maybe a bit smarter than the average fellow, that's all. But Perry - there was, in Dick's opinion, "something wrong" with Little Perry.

Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society carried forward what Roosevelt and Truman had begun and accomplished the most thorough-going redistribution of wealth and status in the name of equality that this country had ever experienced.

The inhabitants of the village, numbering two hundred and seventy, were satisfied that this should be so, quite content to exist inside ordinary life—to work, to hunt, to watch television, to attend school socials, choir practice, meetings of the 4-H Club.

By the end of the decade, America’s stockpile of nuclear weapons would leap from some 300 warheads to nearly 18,000 nuclear weapons. Over the next five decades, the United States would produce more than 70,000 nuclear weapons and spend a staggering $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons programs. In retrospect—and even at the time—it was clear that the H-bomb decision was a turning point in the Cold War’s spiraling arms race. Like Oppenheimer, Kennan was thoroughly “disgusted.” I. I. Rabi was outraged. “I never forgave Truman,” he said.

Vest 2 bu[shels] @ 7 p. Paid 1.40 Mrs. Allen 1/2 bu Paid .35 H. M. Dyer 5 bu Paid 3.50 Hogs and Cattle       Aug 23 9 hogs to K.C.   74.38 24 1 ” ” ”   15.93 Oct 18 1 cow ” ”   32.85 Nov 4 Difference on horse trade   3.00 Miscellaneous       Oct 18 Phillips 8 bu Apples Paid 2.00 Nov 2 Jno. Sweeten 6 1/2 bu on   1.65   a/c     Sept 16 5/4 bu green beans   6.80 Nov 4 12 bu turnips Mr. Brown   3:00

Many teachers felt that no matter how creative they were in the classroom, it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. They talked about a devastating erosion in standards, how the students of today bore no resemblance to the students of even ten or fifteen years ago, how their preoccupations were with anything but school. It was hard for teachers not to feel depressed by the lack of rudimentary knowledge, like in the history class in which students were asked to name the president after John F. Kennedy. Several students meekly raised their hands and proffered the name of Harry Truman. None gave the correct answer of Lyndon Johnson, who also happened to have been a native Texan. In 1975, the average SAT score on the combined math and verbal sections at Permian was 963. For the senior class of 1988–89, the average combined SAT score was 85 points lower, 878. During the seventies, it had been normal for Permian to have seven seniors qualify as National Merit semi-finalists. In the 1988–89 school year the number dropped to one, which the superintendent of schools, Hugh Hayes, acknowledged was inexcusable for a school the size of Permian with a student body that was rooted in the middle class. (A year later, with the help of $15,000 in consultant’s fees to identify those who might pass the required test, the number went up to five.)

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A totalitarian state is no different whether you call it Nazi, Fascist, Communist or Franco’s Spain.

1. Destruction of the unity among the Western countries, thereby isolating the United States. 2. Alienating the Western peoples from their governments so that the efforts of the Western countries to strengthen themselves will be undermined.

William H. Davis, then director of the government’s Office of Economic Stabilization, estimated that industry was so profitable it could raise wages as much as 40 to 50 percent without raising prices. President Harry S. Truman, who felt he had enough on his plate without getting involved in management-labor disputes, repudiated Davis’s calculation and announced Davis was out of a job.

People say, ‘If the Congress were more representative of the people it would be better.’ I say the Congress is too damn representative. It’s just as stupid as the people are, just as uneducated, just as dumb, just as selfish.

Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.” Harry S. Truman

you do not get what is the foundation of the very liberty that we breathe, that the people are entitled to have the facts, that the judgment of the government itself is subject to their opinion and to their control, and in order to exercise that, they are entitled to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, Senator.

Buy only what you really need and cannot do without,” President Harry Truman once said on TV.

Only eleven days after Truman signed the bill authorizing the Marshall Plan, the victory ship John H. Quick, named after a marine who won the Medal of Honor at Guantánamo Bay in the Spanish-American War, set sail from Galveston, Texas, loaded with grain. The Quick was the first in a fleet of five American ships owned by the Luckenbach Steamship Company to carry fifty-four thousand tons of grain, fertilizer, and a variety of other Marshall Plan necessities across the

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. This is a Republic. The greatest in the history of the world. I want this country to continue as a Republic.

Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language another war is in the making. Only one language do they understand—‘How many divisions have you?

historian C. V Wedgwood, “History is lived forwards but it is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only.”43

Consejos para vivir La vida no es la búsqueda de uno mismo. La vida es más bien la creación de uno mismo. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW Es impresionante lo que uno puede conseguir, si no se preocupa de quién se llevará la fama. H. S. TRUMAN Nos podemos convertir en unos miserables o en unas personas fuertes. La cantidad de trabajo necesaria será siempre la misma. CARLOS CASTANEDA Lo que tenemos delante o lo que tenemos detrás es mínimo en comparación con lo que tenemos dentro. RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Truman’s combination of firmness and patience had held freedom’s ground without provoking war. It was hard to imagine any chief executive doing better.

Harry Truman was a man of the ordinary people of America; Dean Acheson was everything ordinary Americans loved to hate.

More than Korea was at stake, the president asserted. “The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war.” The aggression must not be allowed to spread, as to Formosa.

THE WORLD was alarmed, Harry Truman was livid. And he blamed Douglas MacArthur for getting him into this mess. In his five years as president, Truman had tolerated repeated slights and affronts from MacArthur

How could this American so well understand the Asian concept of face, and be so magnanimous, as to spare the soldiers the humiliation of having to turn over their weapons to an enemy? MacArthur countermanded an order by the U.S. Navy forbidding Japanese fishing vessels to venture across Tokyo Bay, lest some launch mines against the American ships there. The Japanese needed to eat, he explained matter-of-factly.

His white hands were smooth as wax, only blemished by the brown spots of age,” wrote Faubion Bowers, a major who often rode guard in the front seat. “His fingers were exquisitely manicured, as if lacquered with polish. He held them in his lap, peacefully. His profile, which I knew better than his full face, was granitic. He was always immaculately clean-shaven, and I never saw a nick on him. He had large bones, an oversize jaw that jutted a little. From face to walk, from gesture to speech, he shone with good breeding….He was really very beautiful, like fine ore, a splendid rock, a boulder.

He made a checklist of objectives: “Destroy the military power. Punish war criminals. Build the structure of representative government. Modernize the constitution. Hold free elections. Enfranchise the women. Release the political prisoners. Liberate the farmers. Establish a free labor movement. Encourage a free economy. Abolish police oppression. Develop a free and responsible press. Liberalize education. Decentralize the political power. Separate church from state.

When famine threatened the devastated country, he commandeered three million tons of food from U.S. Army stores. Congress conducted an inquiry, which MacArthur brushed aside. “Give me bread or give me bullets,” he told the inquisitors.

Truman’s bold stroke in firing MacArthur ended his own career as surely as it terminated MacArthur’s, but it sustained hope that humanity might survive the nuclear age. The courage of Truman’s decision had never been in question; six decades later, its wisdom was apparent as well.

There was considerable doubt in my mind that MacArthur had committed a clear-cut case of military insubordination as defined in Army Regulations,” Bradley wrote. Bradley was painfully aware that the joint chiefs had been sufficiently vague with MacArthur that an insubordination charge—of willful violation of a direct order—might be impossible to prove. Bradley, like Marshall, wanted time to think things over.

OMAR BRADLEY REMEMBERED the first week of April 1951 as the time when the administration felt more fearful than ever about the possibility of the outbreak of World War III.

I have never seen the order committing Napoleon to exile, but I dare say it exuded greater warmth and was couched in terms reflecting higher honor than that which authorized MacArthur to spend the public funds necessary to take him to an oblivion of his own selection.

Taft drove to the heart of the matter. “The principal purpose of the foreign policy of the United States is to maintain the liberty of our people. Its purpose is not to reform the entire world or spread sweetness and light and economic prosperity to peoples who have lived and worked out their own salvation for centuries according to the best of their ability.

The millions of Americans cheering and shouting for MacArthur wanted the general to lead them, like a modern Moses, out of the wilderness of uncertainty that seemed to be Americans’ lot in the contemporary struggle against communism.

The Communist threat is a global one. Its successful advance in one sector threatens the destruction of every other sector. You cannot appease or otherwise surrender to communism in Asia without simultaneously undermining our efforts to halt its advance in Europe.

Once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.” More applause. “In war there is no substitute for victory.” Still more applause.

Truman nodded agreement with what Acheson and the others had said. The Soviet Union, not China, was America’s principal enemy; Europe was the heart of America’s forward defense; Korea was symbolically important but not strategically vital; America must not alienate its allies. The president was pleased at the consensus in the highest councils of the administration. He left the meeting satisfied—but still uncertain. He knew that MacArthur had his own ideas about American strategy and

Acheson stepped conceptually back. “We must ask ourselves: What do we want in Korea?” He looked around the room. “The answer is easy,” he said. “We want to terminate it. We don’t want to beat China in Korea—we can’t. We don’t want to beat China any place—we can’t. They can put in more than we can.” American policy in Korea must keep the broader challenge in mind. “Our great objective must be to hold an area, to terminate the fighting, to turn over some area to the Republic of Korea,

became apparent that General MacArthur had grown so far out of sympathy with the established policies of the United States that there was grave doubt as to whether he could any longer be permitted to exercise the authority in making decisions that normal command functions would assign to a theater commander. In this situation, there was no other recourse but to relieve him.

Far from complaining about the limited nature of the war, MacArthur should have been grateful for it.

Bradley judged it absolutely crucial for the committee—and Congress and the American people—to correctly identify the central struggle of the present era. “One of the great power potentials of this world is the United States of America and her allies. The other great power in this world is Soviet Russia and her satellites. As much as we desire peace, we must realize that we have two centers of power supporting opposing ideologies.

Since the eighteenth century American defense had rested upon a War Department and a separate Navy Department. The separation reflected America’s distinctive approach to war and the country’s peculiar position in the world. America’s founders believed war would be an occasional endeavor best conducted by part-time soldiers: citizens called to arms on the rare occasions when geographically isolated America was attacked from abroad.

Julius Caesar, the general who made himself dictator. The Constitution guarded against Caesarism by designating the president of the United States the commander-in-chief of America’s armed forces; no general, however popular or ambitious, must overrule the president. American practice hedged against Caesarism by hollowing out the army between wars; the citizen-soldiers were sent home, leaving potential Caesars no one to command.

He began with the importance of collective action in Korea. “For the first time in all history, men of many nations are fighting under a single banner to uphold the rule of law in the world,” he said. “This is an inspiring fact. If the rule of law is not upheld we can look forward only to the horror of another war and ultimate chaos. For our part, we do not intend to let that happen.” Since World War II the communists had engaged in subversion; in Korea they had turned to brutal aggression. The United States had no choice other than to act swiftly and boldly. “If the history of the 1930s teaches us anything, it is that appeasement of dictators is the sure road to world war. If aggression were allowed to succeed in Korea, it would be an open invitation to new acts of aggression elsewhere.

We here fight Europe’s war with arms, while there it is still confined to words. If we lose the war to communism in Asia, the fate of Europe will be gravely jeopardized. Win it, and Europe will probably be saved from war and stay free.

Bradley admitted. “The swiftness and magnitude of the victory were mind-boggling. We had been on the point of despair, bracing for a ‘Dunkirk’ at Pusan and/or a disaster at Inchon. A mere two weeks later the North Korean Army had been routed and all South Korea had been regained. MacArthur was deservedly canonized as a ‘military genius.’ Inchon was his boldest and most dazzling victory. In hindsight, the JCS seemed like a bunch of Nervous Nellies to have doubted.