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101 " [I am] just a common everyday man whose instincts are to be ornery, who's anxious to be right. "
― Harry Truman , 1946-52: Years of Trial and Hope
102 " large numbers of reporters and "
― Harry Truman , 1945: Year of Decision
103 " worked, the bomb, in all probability, would shorten "
104 " You know when people can get excited over the ordinary things in life, they live "
― Harry Truman
105 " The only thing that's really new is the history you don't know. "
106 " People who run for office and are defeated aren’t rejected in the usual sense of the word. They’re just defeated because they couldn’t get enough votes that one time. It doesn’t mean the public despises them. It’s a preference for somebody else for that particular office at that particular moment, that’s all. The examples I’ve given have shown that when those men were passed up, they were still highly thought of and were still great men. There were a good many like that. You take the Adams family. After John Quincy Adams passed on, there were Adams descendants in Lincoln’s cabinet. They wrote important histories and things of that kind. Even in the states, some good men are governors who have been defeated previously in elections, even in previous tries for governor. If they don’t become pessimists and decide to lay down and take it, if they get up and start over again, why, they don’t have any trouble. "
― Harry Truman , Where the Buck Stops: The Personal and Private Writings of Harry S. Truman
107 " My definition of a leader in a free country is a man who can persuade people to do what they don’t want to do, or do what they’re too lazy to do, and like it. "
108 " If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog. "
109 " Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it. "
110 " I’ll come back to George Washington just long enough to say goodbye to him. He was a great man and a good man, and when his work was over as our great first president, he went back home to Virginia for his long-earned rest. Just three years later, on December 14, 1799, at the age of sixty-seven, he went to his final rest. As "
111 " everything I’ve read about his death indicates that he died peacefully, and perhaps he died because he’d accomplished his purpose. He "
112 " 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[...] "
113 " The union of our arms in "
114 " Within the first few months I discovered that being President is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep on riding or be swallowed. "
115 " ...I won't sell influence and I'm perfectly willing to be cussed if I'm right. "
116 " An expert is someone who doesn't want to learn anything new, because then he would not be an expert "
117 " him up, of course. I don’t know whether they "
118 " Nearly every crisis seems to be the worst one, but after it’s over, it isn’t so bad. "
119 " The next generation never learns anything from the previous one until it’s brought home with a hammer. I’ve wondered why the next generation can’t profit from the generation before but they never do until they get knocked in the head by experience. "
120 " The nature of the congressional investigating committee has suffered violence at the hands of some who have not understood or appreciated the scope and function of such a committee. Too often, in recent times, the committees have been used for publicity rather than for the original purposes intended. "