Truman quotes:

+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share
  • My lasting impression of Truman Capote is that he was a terribly gentle, terribly sensitive, and terribly sad man. -- Alvin Ailey
  • Truman is now seen as a near-great president because he put in place the containment doctrine boosted by the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan and NATO, which historians now see as having been at the center of American success in the cold war. -- Robert Dallek
  • There used to be this feeling under Eisenhower and Kennedy and Roosevelt and Truman that government was a solution. Trust in the presidency fell precipitously under Johnson - real lows. And it's never come back. It's a trend that, if you're liberal, is really discouraging. -- Robert Caro
  • With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that. -- David McCullough
  • I loved Harry Truman with all my heart and soul. -- Willard Scott
  • Truman Capote has made lying an art. A minor art. -- Gore Vidal
  • Hysterical in The Mask; funny yet moving in The Truman Show. -- Jim Carrey
  • I'm a Harry Truman, JFK, Scoop Jackson and Bill Clinton Democrat. -- Joe Lieberman
  • I've reached a point in my life where my Truman Show boat has hit the painting. -- Kanye West
  • Jimmy Carter as President is like Truman Capote marrying Dolly Parton. The job is just too big for him. -- Rich Little
  • [President Truman] was free of the greatest vice in a leader, his ego never came between him and his job. -- Dean Acheson
  • Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, others, knew how to lead. They knew how to ask the American people for the right things. -- John F. Kerry
  • I have three favorite politicians: Reagan, Truman, and Bobby Kennedy - Bobby for showing remarkable political courage despite being loathed by many on both sides. -- Joe Scarborough
  • We had been frightened of atomic weapons since 1945. In those days I became convinced and remain convinced now that, after Hitler , Truman was the greatest murderer in the world. -- Martin Niemoller
  • It's hard these days to have a conversation, at least it is for me, about [Truman]Capote without "Good Night, and Good Luck" coming up in the same conversation. -- Tavis Smiley
  • I think projects find me. It's really interesting. Everything I've done, from "The Truman Show," the "Eternal Sunshine" to "Yes Man" and "Bruce Almighty," always come into my life at the perfect time. -- Jim Carrey
  • We must uphold the promise of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton and never allow the President and his Republican friends to threaten Social Security by putting it on the Wall Street trading block. -- John F. Kerry
  • We now have a lack of readiness that is quite scary. We have planes that were - that Harry Truman inaugurated, the B-52. We have - the Navy has been gutted and decimated. The readiness of the Marines is way down. -- Jeb Bush
  • Often we comfort ourselves only with words, but if we pray enough, the conviction will come too that Christ is our King, not Stalin, Bevins, or Truman. That He has all things in His hands, that 'all things work together for good for those that love Him. -- Dorothy Day
  • Are there any writers on the literary scene whom I consider truly great? Yes: Truman Capote. -- Truman Capote
  • My life is not unlike Truman's. I can't go anywhere. -- Jim Carrey
  • My favourite president, and the one I admired most, was Harry Truman. -- Jimmy Carter
  • I went to a little liberal-arts college in Missouri called Truman State University. -- Jenna Fischer
  • I love Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor. I read a lot of American writers. -- Kiran Desai
  • There are examples of ex-presidents speaking out. Jimmy Carter has not held back on a variety of issues. Harry Truman didn't. -- Robert Dallek
  • Harry S. Truman had his moods. His birthplace is the only tourist attraction in America where you don't see Japanese with cameras. -- A. Whitney Brown
  • I think Democrats made a mistake running away from liberalism. Liberalism, uh, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John and Robert Kennedy - that's what the Democratic party ought to reach for. -- Theodore C. Sorensen
  • Nobody wants to hear that you met Harry Truman... I met Harry Truman... But you know what I mean? Nobody's interested. They want to know you met Rihanna. And that kills me. -- Joan Rivers
  • It was such a leap in my career when 'Truman Show' came along. It's always been a long process for me insofar as recognition goes, but that's OK because you appreciate it when it comes. -- Jim Carrey
  • That was the principle of reparations to which President Truman agreed at Potsdam. And the United States will not agree to the taking from Germany of greater reparations than was provided by the Potsdam Agreement. -- James F. Byrnes
  • In the first weeks after Hiroshima, extravagant statements by President Truman and other official spokesmen for the U.S. government transformed the inception of the atomic age into the most mythologized event in American history. -- Stewart Udall
  • I always go back to Harry Truman: Should we drop an atomic bomb to save 100,000 lives? That's a hell of a decision to make. Did he make that decision by himself? No, he had advisers. -- Lee Iacocca
  • Every President I think I've ever known, except Truman, has thought they didn't quite get done what they wanted done. And toward the end of their Administrations, they were disappointed and wished they had done some things differently. -- Billy Graham
  • Harry Truman, who was a Bible-believing Christian Zionist, defied the secretary of state he so admired, George C. Marshall, and won a place in Israel's history by recognizing the new state 11 minutes after it declared its independence in 1948. -- Elliott Abrams
  • It was immediately apparent that it was full of tricky ingredients to balance. In fact, I found it very intriguing. What held me back from saying yes to the producer was that I wasn't sure who could play Truman. -- Peter Weir
  • Truman Capote famously claimed to have nearly absolute recall of dialogue and used his prodigious memory as an excuse never to take notes or use a tape recorder, but I suspect his memory claims were just a useful cover to invent dialogue whole cloth. -- Joshua Foer
  • First lady has been a thankless position. Eleanor Roosevelt was brilliant and had strong views. She was criticized for her politics and for her appearance. Mrs. Roosevelt was attacked for being too involved in politics. Bess Truman was criticized for being uninvolved in politics. -- Karen DeCrow
  • When you think about [Truman] Capote in the - was what he did exploitative of a person's life or exploitative of these murders? You look at our culture now, you look at celebrity and how it plays out in our culture now, and Capote was one of the great PR men of his time. -- Philip Seymour Hoffman
  • I remember writing 'The One I Can't Have' at the kitchen table. I was looking at a picture of Truman Capote with Marilyn Monroe and that's where I started. It doesn't make any sense because he was gay, but it was just the idea of the short guy and the beautiful blonde out of his league. That's where I started, but very quickly it became about me. -- Teddy Thompson
  • I am the heterosexual Truman Capote. -- Joseph Epstein
  • We support President Truman's civil rights program. -- Eugenie Anderson
  • Truman Capote is really an interesting cat. -- Steve Earle
  • Truman Capote was a magical, beautiful writer. -- Lisa Unger
  • Everyone is against Harry (Truman) except the people. -- Clark Griffith
  • Before Truman, journalism and non-fiction weren't taken very seriously. -- Gerald Clarke
  • Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of. -- Stephen Ambrose
  • Before Truman Capote, journalism and non-fiction weren't taken very seriously. -- Gerald Clarke
  • My favorite monologue in the book is Kate Harrington's story of her relationship with Truman. -- George Plimpton
  • My dream dinner party guests would be Ethel Kennedy, Truman Capote and Hunter S. Thompson. -- Dylan Penn
  • Despite its flaws, the American electoral system has produced Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and Harry Truman. -- Robert Dallek
  • Harry Truman proves that old adage that any man can become President of the United States. -- Norman Thomas
  • [Truman Capote] was not only just selling his writing, but he was selling himself as a person. -- Philip Seymour Hoffman
  • I always said little Truman had a voice so high it could only be detected by bats. -- Tennessee Williams
  • I never graduated from Iowa, but I was only there for two terms - Truman's and Eisenhower's. -- Alex Karras
  • The first election I remember was Dewey Truman in '48. I was, I guess, seven years old. -- George Will
  • For The Truman Show, I worked for a few weeks, do my gig, then I was done. -- Ed Harris
  • I liked Truman very much. He was precise and businesslike. After a while, it was his turn. -- Lord Mountbatten
  • I would like to say that no man ever was given finer cooperation than that given me by President Truman. -- Paul Hoffman
  • If Truman hadn't published 'Answered Prayers' in parts, he'd have had the drive to finish it. The peacocks took it away from him. -- Jack Dunphy
  • I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hoped for, President Truman worked for, and President Kennedy died for. -- Lyndon B. Johnson
  • When you first saw 'The Truman Show,' did anyone else walk around for the next week not picking your nose just in case? -- Anna Kendrick
  • I would say that President Roosevelt probably was more intimately in touch with the press corps at the White House than President Truman was. -- Clifton Daniel
  • I was in Independence, Missouri when Johnson signed the Medicare bill, with Truman standing there. Truman had first proposed Medicare, but couldn't get it through. -- Helen Thomas
  • If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, Harry Truman would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayer's expense. -- H. L. Mencken
  • President Roosevelt proved that a President could serve for life. Truman proved that anyone could be elected. Eisenhower proved that your country can be run without a President. -- Nikita Khrushchev
  • Let me tell you the first president to recognize the state of Israel was Harry Truman, a Democrat and every president since, Democrat and Republican, has stood closely with Israel. -- Dick Durbin
  • Presidents Truman and Nixon left office under dark clouds of scandal and with abysmal levels of support, but with the passage of time, both have been reassessed far more positively. -- Monica Crowley
  • If Obama's vision of the public sector is socialism, then so too were the visions of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. -- Jeff Greenfield
  • Harry Truman was courageous enough to command that racial segregation be ended in the military. I was serving in a submarine in the U.S. Navy at the time he issued the order. -- Jimmy Carter
  • [ New York ] is a place that worships incompetence particularly if it's combined with energy and paranoid self-confidence. Only in a city like New York could Truman Capote have made it, or John Simon. -- Gore Vidal
  • In 1940, then-Senator Harry Truman headed up a Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. In the course of World War II, more than $15 billion in unnecessary and fraudulent defense spending was identified. -- Bernie Sanders
  • Well, you know what, I'm 60 years old, and I've been interested in politics since I was on my daddy's knee. During the 1948 election, we were praying for Truman. I know a lot about politics. -- Roger Ebert
  • I would go to the all-night grocery store and pretend that I was at Studio 54 because it was the only place open all night. Truman Capote in the frozen foods. Andy Warhol over in vegetables. -- James St. James
  • Truman Capote was a pop figure, but it wasn't until he went on David Susskind's show and had that extraordinary voice and manner that everyone could imitate, that he really took off as a figure. -- James Wolcott
  • President Obama's Justice Department won less than half of its total cases before the Supreme Court, which is the lowest presidential win rate since Harry Truman. Average historically for the last 50 years is about 70 percent. -- Ted Cruz
  • I suspect it's because Truman Democrats have been replaced by Gruber Democrats - self-styled elitists who feed lavishly at the public trough and think government should serve them, not the hoi polloi they disdain and deceive. -- Jack Kelly
  • All the other members of the U.N. were admitted, at the outset or subsequently, but Israel was created by the U.N. as a Jewish state, on the motion of Stalin's ambassador, seconded by President Truman's. -- Conrad Black
  • In the first rule of politics, you know, Harry Truman, the buck stops here. Take responsibility. What I've learned over the years is that people will give people in politics a lot of rope if they just take responsibility. -- Susan Estrich
  • Mr. Truman studiously avoided giving power to his White House staff that has been characteristic of recent administrations. Staff people in the White House, with no responsibility but incredible authority is one of the reasons we're now in so much trouble. -- Stuart Symington
  • Leo Crowley, Harry [Truman]'s Foreign Economic Administrator, tells Congressmen the theory...: 'If you create good governments in foreign countries, automatically you will have better markets for ourselves.' With that honeycunt staring you in the face, you'd forget your grammar too. -- E. L. Doctorow
  • Truman has become the patron saint of failed presidents because he left office with a 27 percent approval rating, and people were saying, 'To err is Truman,' yet look at what he did: the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO, the Truman Doctrine. -- Douglas Brinkley
  • The only President who clearly died of overwork was Polk, and that was a long time ago. Hoover, who worked intensely and humorlessly as President, lived for more than thirty years after the White House; Truman, who worked intensely and gaily, lived for twenty -- Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
  • I admired Truman, among many other things, because he integrated the Army. I admired JFK because the very first civil rights legislation was passed at his insistence. JFK showed what you could do, though he was a deeply flawed person, as we all now know. -- Jed S. Rakoff
  • Truman left in the middle of an unpopular war, a war of choice. Truman didn't have to go into South Korea. And he was reviled and ridiculed for the stalemate that resulted. Now, he's seen as one of the great presidents of the 20th century. -- Charles Krauthammer
  • At the end of their first years, there are few people who would have predicted that Truman would be elected in 1948 or that Reagan would get a second term. It's always premature to make some kind of categorical judgment after the first year in office. -- Robert Dallek
  • I'm very proud of what Harry Truman turned out to be in office and the record he made. Certainly I think he'll go down in history as one of the greats, because of his conscience, his determination to stick with what he knew was right. -- Walter Cronkite
  • "The whole world is three drinks behind. If everyone in the world would take three drinks, we would have no trouble. If Stalin, Truman and everybody else in the world had three drinks right now, we'd all loosen up and we wouldn't need the United Nations. -- Humphrey Bogart
  • After World War II there were many Jews who remained in refugee camps...President Harry F. Truman called for the Harrison Commission to investigate the situation in the camps and it was a pretty gloomy report. There were very few Jews admitted into the United States. -- Noam Chomsky
  • A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world. -- Mary McCarthy
  • Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot". ~Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1958, spoken by the character Holly Golightly -- Truman Capote
  • To wake up one morning and feel that I was a last a grown-up person, emptied of resentment, vengeful thoughts and other wasteful childish emotions. To find myself, in other words, an adult. Truman Capote -- Truman Capote
  • When contemplating General Eisenhower winning the Presidential election, Truman said, Hell sit here, and hell say, Do this! Do that! And nothing will happen. Poor Ikeit wont be a bit like the Army. Hell find it very frustrating. -- Harry S. Truman
  • Barack Obama is not Harry Truman, who dropped the A-bomb on Japan to stop World War II. Barack Obama is not John F. Kennedy, who lowered marginal tax rates to get economic growth and job creation. Barack Obama and the far left, they are a completely different ball of wax. -- Monica Crowley
  • As you may recall, Truman was extremely unpopular when he finally left Washington in 1953, thanks largely to the Korean War. Today, however, he is thought to have been a solidly good president, a 'Near Great' even, in the terminology of those surveys of historians they do every now and then. -- Thomas Frank
  • What I have in common with the character in 'Truman' is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started. -- Jim Carrey
  • Harper Lee and Truman Capote became friends as next-door neighbors in the late 1920s, when they were about kindergarten age. From the start, they recognized in each other "an apartness," as Capote later expressed it; and both loved reading. When Lee's father gave them an old Underwood typewriter, they began writing original stories together. -- Charles J. Shields
  • Obama has been perhaps the most partisan President since Truman. He hasn't learned to be civil - note his insulting speech to Paul Ryan, who did us the courtesy of scoring a budget. The president has to talk to Republicans when it comes to the debt ceiling. He has reached the debt ceiling before anyone expected. -- Grover Norquist
+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share