Harry Truman Quotes

“He loved politics in large part exactly because it meant time spent with men like Cactus Jack Garner(who would be remembered for observing that the vice presidency was not worth a pitcher of warm piss).”
― David McCullough, Truman

“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, Truman

“I hadn't ought to say this but he’s [Billy Graham] one of those counterfeits I was telling you about. He claims he’s a friend of all the Presidents, but he was never a friend of mine when I was President. I just don’t go for people like that. All he’s interested in is getting his name in the paper.”
― Harry Truman

“The answer reached the President at five minutes past four that afternoon, Tuesday, August 14. Japan had surrendered. At 6:10 the Swiss chargé d'affaires in Washington arrived at the State Department to present Secretary [of State James] Byrnes with the Japanese text, which Byrnes carried at once to the White House.

"(The document would have arrived ten minutes sooner but for the fact that a sixteen-year-old messenger, Thomas E. Jones, who picked it up at the RCA offices on Connecticut Avenue to deliver to the Swiss legation, had been stopped by the police for making a U-turn on Connecticut.)”
― David McCullough, Truman

“After a few minutes Truman went back inside the White House, so he could call his mother and personally deliver the news: World War II was over. ("That was Harry," ninety-two-year-old Mamma Truman said after hanging up. "Harry's such a wonderful man... I knew he'd call.")”
― A.J. Baime, The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World—A Fast-Paced Chronicle of Truman’s Tumultuous First Days Amidst World War II