Truman Quotes

Some of our finest leaders were not intellectuals at all, and I admire them enormously because they weren't. Harry Truman wasn't. ~ Michael Ignatieff

The 112th Congress passed only 220 laws, the lowest number enacted by any Congress. In 1948, when President Truman called the 80th Congress a 'Do-Nothing' Congress, it had passed more than 900 laws. ~ Juan Williams

Since Monday, it has been raining buoyant summer rain shot through with sun, but dark at night and full of sound, full of dripping leaves, watery chimings, sleepless scuttlings. Billy Bob is wide-awake, dry-eyed, though everything he does is a little frozen and his tongue is as stiff as a bell tongue. It has not been easy for him, Miss Bobbit's going. Because she'd meant more than that. Than what? Than being thirteen years old and crazy in love. She was the queer things in him, like the pecan tree and liking books and caring enough about people to let them hurt him. She was the things he was afraid to show anyone else. And in the dark the music trickled through the rain: won't there be nights when we will hear it just as though it were really there? And afternoons when the shadows will be all at once confused, and she will pass before us, unfurling across the lawn like a pretty piece of ribbon? ~ Truman Capote

You may invite the entire 35th Division to your wedding if you want to. I guess it's going to be yours as well as mine. We might as well have the church full while we are at it. ~ Bess Truman

The White House is the finest prison in the world. ~ Harry S. Truman

What do you think? This ought to be the right kind of place for tough guy like you. Garbage cans. Rats galore. Plenty of cat-bums to gang around with. So scram,' she said, dropping him…
'...I told you. We just met by the river one day: that's all. Independents, both of us. We never made each other any promises. We never -' she said, and her voice collapsed, a tic, an invalid whiteness seized her face. The car had paused for a traffic light. Then she had the door open, she was running down the street; and I ran after her.
...she shuddered, she had to grip my arm to stand up: 'Oh, Jesus God. We did belong to each other. He was mine.' Then I made her a promise, I said I'd come back and find her cat. 'I'll take care of him, too. I promise.'
She smiled: that cheerless new pinch of a smile. 'But what about me?' she said, whispered, and shivered again. 'I'm very scared, Buster. Yes, at last. Because it could go on forever. Not knowing what's yours until you're thrown it away. The mean reds, they're nothing... ~ Truman Capote

Without a strong educational system democracy is crippled. Knowledge is not only key to power. It is the citadel of human freedom. ~ Harry S. Truman

It is important to the peace of the world to understand each other and have full faith in each other's sincerity. That is all we ask; that is all we want[ ... ] ~ Harry Truman

You don't understand. You've never hated anybody.
No, I never have. We're allotted just so much time on earth, and I wouldn't want the Lord to see me wasting mine in any such manner. ~ Truman Capote

Call it precious and go to hell, but I believe a story can be wrecked by a faulty rhythm in a sentence - especially if it occurs toward the end - or a mistake in paragraphing, even punctuation. Henry James is the maestro of the semicolon. Hemingway is a first-rate paragrapher. From the point of view of ear, Virginia Woolf never wrote a bad sentence. I don't mean to imply that I successfully practice what I preach. I try, that's all. ~ Truman Capote

But there were moments when she played songs that made you wonder where she learned them, where indeed she came from. Harsh-tender wandering tunes with words that smacked of pinewoods or prairie. One went: Don't wanna sleep, Don't wanna die, Just wanna go a-travelin' through the pastures of the sky; and this one seemed to gratify her the most, for often she continued it long after her hair hard dried, after the sun had gone and there were lighted windows in the dusk. ~ Truman Capote

The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His works means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning. ~ Truman Capote

We believe that all men are created equal because they are created in the image of God. ~ Harry Truman

You know those days when you get the mean reds?"
"Same as the blues?"
"No," she said slowly. "No, the blues are because you're getting fat or maybe it's been raining too long. You're sad, that's all. But the mean reds are horrible. You're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what you're afraid of ... ~ Truman Capote

The wind is us
it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields. ~ Truman Capote

It's a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them. ~ Truman Capote

Royal summoned mourners. They came from the village, from the neighboring hills and, wailing like dogs at midnight, laid siege to the house. Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves: it was the art of sorrow, and those who best mimicked grief were much admired. After the funeral everyone went away, satisfied that they'd done a good job. ~ Truman Capote

I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together. I'm not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it's like. ~ Truman Capote

So little, once it has changed, changes back. ~ Truman Capote

President Roosevelt and President Truman and President Eisenhower had the same experience, they all made the effort to get along with the Russians. But every time, finally it failed. And the reason it failed was because the Communists are determined to destroy us, and regardless of what hand of friendship we may hold out or what arguments we may put up, the only thing that will make that decisive difference is the strength of the United States. ~ John F. Kennedy

When we refused to be forced out of Berlin, we demonstrated to the people of Europe that with their cooperation we would act, and act resolutely, when their freedom was threatened. ~ Harry S. Truman

I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. ~ Truman Capote

To be or not to be?' That is not the question. What is the question? The question is not one of being, but of becoming. 'To become more or not to become more' This is the question faced by each intelligence in our universe. ~ Truman G. Madsen

Republicans don't like people to talk about depressions. You can hardly blame them for that. You remember the old saying: Don't talk about rope in the house where somebody has been hanged. ~ Harry Truman

As far as responsibility goes, no one really wants it -- but all of us are responsible to the community we live in & its laws. ~ Truman Capote

Dizzy with excitement is no mere phrase. ~ Truman Capote

Ants - the pious insect, Randolph called them: they fill me with oh so much admiration and ah oh so much gloom: such puritan spirit in their mindless march of Godly industry, but can so anti-individual a government admit the poetry of what is past understanding? Certainly the man who refused to carry his crumb would find assassins on his trail, and doom in every smile. As for me, I prefer the solitary mole: he is no rose dependent upon thorn and root, nor ant whose time of being is organized by the analterable herd: sightless, he goes his separate way, knowing truth and freedom are attitudes of the spirit. ~ Truman Capote

Any story worth telling is worth exaggerating. ~ Harry S. Truman

But if Miss Golightly remained unconscious of my existence, except as a doorbell convenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. I discovered, from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her regular reading consisted of tabloids and travel folders and astrological charts; that she smoked an esoteric cigarette called Picayunes; survived on cottage cheese and Melba Toast; that her vari-colored hair was somewhat self-induced. The same source made it evident that she received V-letters by the bale. They were torn into strips like bookmarks. I used occasionally to pluck myself a bookmark in passing. Remember and miss you and rain and please write and damn and goddamn were the words that recurred most often on these slips; those, and lonesome and love. ~ Truman Capote

Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court he ceases to be your friend. ~ Harry S. Truman

Partisanship must end at the waters edge. ~ Harry S. Truman

Somebody had angrily scrawled DOPE HOUSE with a broad Sharpie above the apartment 6G peephole in the Truman Houses.
"The quality goes in before the name goes on," the CSU tech standing next to Billy said before entering the scene. ~ Harry Brandt

Truman charged that Republicans were "Wall Street reactionaries," "gluttons of privilege," "bloodsuckers," and "plunderers." GOP legislators in the 80th Congress, he said, were "tools of the most reactionary elements" who would "skim the cream from our natural resources to satisfy their own greed." Dismissing Dewey, "whose name rhymes with hooey," Truman said, "If you send another Republican Congress to Washington, you're a bigger bunch of suckers than I think you are." "Give 'em hell, Harry!" the people shouted back. "Pour it on!"59 ~ James T. Patterson

What I am trying to achieve is a voice sitting by a fireplace telling you a story on a winter's evening. ~ Truman Capote

You don't run out on people; you run out on yourself. ~ Truman Capote

People are very much wrought up about the Communist bugaboo. ~ Harry S. Truman

Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, On the one hand on the other. ~ Harry S. Truman

Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. ~ Harry S. Truman

I can't accept overnight what I've always denied. ~ Truman Capote

If you can't convince them [with your logic] then just confound them [with your wit.] ~ Harry S. Truman

A plaster girl with intense glass eyes sat astride a bicycle pedaling at the maddest pace; though its wheel spokes spun hypnotically, the bicycle of course never budged: all that effort and the poor girl going nowhere. It was a pitifully human situation, and one that Sylvia could so exactly identify with herself that she always felt a real pang. ~ Truman Capote

The stress stops here ~ Harry S. Truman

And yes, to answer you seriously, I am beginning to be ... well, not bored, but tempted; afraid, but tempted. When you've been in pain for a long time, when you wake up every morning with a rising sense of hysteria, then boredom is what you want, marathon sleeps, a silence in yourself. ~ Truman Capote

There were hints of sunrise on the rim of the sky, yet it was still dark, and the traces of morning color were like goldfish swimming in ink. ~ Truman Capote

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow's viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences. ~ Harry S. Truman

The answers to the world's perplexities are, in fact, found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ ... The more we can bring others to see the gospel in action, the more they will be willing to at least tolerate us, then to encourage us, and eventually to cooperate with us. ~ Truman G. Madsen

As Miss Golightly was saying, before she was so rudely interrupted ... ~ Truman Capote

The compulsively superstitious person is also very often a serious believer in fate; that was the case with Perry. ~ Truman Capote

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

Mick Jagger moves like a parody between a majorette girl and Fred Astaire. ~ Truman Capote

Mama and Papa are more to blame (for delinquency) than the kids; parents should stay home and raise their children and spend less time in taverns. ~ Harry Truman

We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented. ~ Ed Harris

Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can't generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has defined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right. ~ Truman Capote

It's redundant to die in Los Angeles. ~ Truman Capote

Years later, the plain-speaking Truman would explain: "I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president . . . . I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail. ~ Douglas Brinkley

Now listen to me, Buddy: there is only one unpardonable sin - deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven. That, never. ~ Truman Capote

Sorrow and profound fatigue are at the heart of Dewey's silence. It had been his ambition to learn "exactly what happened in that house that night." Twice now he'd been told, and the two versions were very much alike, the only serious discrepancy being that Hickock attributed all four deaths to Smith, while Smith contended that Hickock had killed the two women. But the confessions, though they answered
questions of how and why, failed to satisfy his sense of meaningful design. The crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act; the victims might as well have been killed by lightning. Except for one thing: they had experienced prolonged terror, they had suffered. And Dewey could not forget their sufferings. Nonetheless, he found it possible to look at the man beside him without anger - with, rather, a measure of sympathy - for Perry Smith's life had been no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage and then another. Dewey's sympathy, however, was not deep enough to accommodate either forgiveness or mercy. He hoped to see Perry and his partner hanged - hanged back to back. ~ Truman Capote

Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it. ~ Harry S. Truman

What we want most is only to be held ... and told ... that everything (everything is a funny thing, is baby milk and Papa's eyes, is roaring logs on a cold morning, is hoot-owls and the boy who makes you cry after school, is Mama's long hair, is being afraid, and twisted faces on the bedroom wall) ... everything is going to be all right. ~ Truman Capote

Mother has to be coerced into doing a lot of things. ~ Bess Truman

If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there's no point in it ... for me, every act of art is the act of solving a mystery. ~ Truman Capote

It was a warm evening, nearly summer, and she wore a slim cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker ~ Truman Capote

I think the whole student rebellion is not really a rebellion at all....They want a certain kind of identity; they're jockeying with each other for political power in their own culture. The basis for this behavior is a desire for notoriety. ~ Truman Capote

Mr, Truman was jubilant. President Truman. True man; what a strange name, come to think of it. We refer to Jesus Christ as true God and true Man. Truman is a true man of his time in that he was jubilant. He was not a son of God, brother of Christ, brother of the Japanese, jubilating as he did. He went from table to table on the cruiser which was bringing him home from the Big Three conference, telling the great news; "jubilant" the newspapers said. Jubilate Deo. We have killed 318,000 Japanese. ~ Dorothy Day

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. ~ Truman Capote

She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox. ~ Truman Capote

France is France and a grand place for Frenchman. ~ Harry S. Truman

How was it that such effort, such plain virtue, could overnight be reduced to this - smoke, thinning as it rose and was received by the big, annihilating sky? ~ Truman Capote

Never love a wild thing ... If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky. ~ Truman Capote

The union of our arms in ~ Harry Truman

Everybody has to feel superior to somebody," she said. "But it's customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege. ~ Truman Capote

I like to talk on TV about those things that aren't worth writing about. ~ Truman Capote

But if you live your life without feeling and compassion for your fellowman - you are as an animal - 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' & happiness & peace of mind is not attained by living thus. ~ Truman Capote

There is no gratitude for things past. Gratitude is always for what you're going to do for people in the future. ~ Harry S. Truman

Never love a wild thing ~ Truman Capote

They shared a doom against which virtue was no defense ~ Truman Capote

You should never form judgments from front page headlines. As with a contract, the fine print on the inside pages should be carefully studied. ~ Harry S. Truman

He "wasn't used to being criticized, and he never did get it through his head that's what politics is all about. He was used to getting his ass kissed." ~ Harry S. Truman

So, what is it that I bring to her?" [Angus]
"Strength. Security. Stability. All the best 's' words." [Truman]

Truman smirked and so did Angus. ~ Elizabeth Finn

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
[Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950] ~ Harry Truman

I'm very proud that I'm smart enough to get to the point ~ Harry S. Truman

In school we only learn to recognize the words and to spell but the application of these words to real life is another thing that only life and living can give us. ~ Truman Capote

Now about those ghosts. I'm sure they're here and I'm not half so alarmed at meeting up with any of them as I am at having to meet the live nuts I have to see every day. ~ Bess Truman

Even so, my spirits heightened whenever I felt in my pocket the key to this apartment; with all its gloom, it still was a place of my own, the first, and my books were there, and jars of pencils to sharpen, everything I needed, so I felt, to become the writer I wanted to be. ~ Truman Capote

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

Champagne does have one regular drawback: swilled as a regular thing a certain sourness settles in the tummy, and the result is permanent bad breath. Really incurable. ~ Truman Capote

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Republican. But I repeat myself. ~ Harry Truman

Herbert Hoover once ran on the slogan, 'Two cars in every garage'. Apparently, the Republican candidate this year is running on the slogan, 'Two families in every garage'. ~ Harry S. Truman

New York is a diamond iceberg floating in river water. ~ Truman Capote

Morning was in the room and pigeons were gargling on the fire escape. ~ Truman Capote

I felt infuriatingly left out
a tugboat in drydock while she, glittery voyager of secure destination, steamed down the harbor with whistles whistling and confetti in the air. ~ Truman Capote

The feeble-minded, the neurotic, the criminal, perhaps, also, the artist, have unpredictability and perverted innocence in common. ~ Truman Capote

He cannot tolerate feelings of frustration as a more normal person can, and he is poorly able to rid himself of those feelings except through antisocial activity ... ~ Truman Capote

For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy making arm of the government. ~ Harry S. Truman

Watching her, I remembered a girl I'd known in school, a grind, Mildred Grossman. Mildred: with her moist hair and greasy spectacles, her strained fingers that dissected frogs and carried coffee to picket lines, her flat eyes that only turned toward the stars to estimate their chemical tonnage. Earth and air could not be more opposite than Mildred and Holly, yet in my head they acquired a Siamese twinship, and the thread of thought that had sewn them together ran like this: the average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul--desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic. I imagined them in a restaurant of the future, Mildred still studying the menu for its nutritional values, Holly still gluttonous for everything on it. It would never be different. They would walk through life and out of it with the same determined step that took small notice of those cliffs at the left. ~ Truman Capote

Roosevelt loved the subtleties of human relations ... He was sensitive to nuances in a way that Harry Truman never was and never would be. Truman, with his rural Missouri background, and partly too, because of the limits of his education, was inclined to see things in far simpler terms, as right or wrong, wise or foolish. He dealt little in abstractions. ~ David McCullough

I come to the office each morning and stay for long hours doing what has to be done to the best of my ability. And when you've done the best you can, you can't do any better. ~ Harry Truman

Of course I believe in free enterprise but in my system of free enterprise, the democratic principle is that there never was, never has been, never will be, room for the ruthless exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. ~ Harry S. Truman

May the sun never set on American baseball. ~ Harry S. Truman

the city swayed in a squall-like downpour. Sharks might have swum through the air, ~ Truman Capote