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The men were saying they would give Oklahoma to the Germans and call it even.
Harry Truman's men on Ft. Sil durimg training for WW I
at Grandview.
We worship money instead of honor. A billionaire, in our estimation, is much greater in these days in the eyes of the people than the public servant who works for public interest. It makes no difference if the billionaire rode to wealth on the sweat of little children and the blood of underpaid labor. No one ever considered Carnegie libraries steeped in the blood of the Homestead steelworkers, but they are. We do not remember that the Rockefeller Foundation is founded on the dead miners of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company and a dozen other similar performances. We worship Mammon; and until we
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Truman had it right in 1937. His assesment is still true today.
Wild greed along the lines I have been describing brought on the Depression. When investment bankers, so-called, continually load great transportation companies with debt in order to sell securities to savings banks and insurance companies so they can make a commission, the well finally runs dry. . . . There is no magic solution to the condition of the railroads, but one thing is certain—no formula, however scientific, will work without men of proper character responsible for physical and financial operations of the roads and for the administration of the laws provided by Congress.
Replace railroads with housing and he is still right today.
I believe in the brotherhood of man; not merely the brotherhood of white men, but the brotherhood of all men before the law. . . . If any class or race can be permanently set apart from, or pushed down below the rest in political and civil rights, so may any other class or race when it shall incur the displeasure of its more powerful associates, and we may say farewell to the principles on which we count our safety. . . . Negroes have been preyed upon by all types of exploiters, from the installment salesman of clothing, pianos, and furniture to the vendors of vice. The majority of our Negro
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“[I am] just a common everyday man whose instincts are to be ornery, who’s anxious to be right,”
Harry S Truman describing himself in a letter to his future wife (Bess). I see a lot of myself in that statement. I do not see myself as great a man as he was.
“Always do right! This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
my motto that was shared by President Truman
“Courage: What is it?” Lilienthal asked in his diary. “Isn’t it the capacity to hang on?”
Wow.
“Brave men don’t belong to any one country. I respect bravery wherever I see it.”
Amen.
Truman would be remembered saying it was remarkable how much could be accomplished if you didn’t care who received the credit.
Marshall, as everyone present was well aware, never complimented the people with whom he worked. It was not his way. “The full stature of this man,” he said, his eyes on Truman, “will only be proven by history, but I want to say here and now that there has never been a decision made under this man’s administration, affecting policies beyond our shores, that has not been in the best interest of this country. It is not the courage of these decisions that will live, but the integrity of the man.”
“You are the government,” he said time after time. “Practical politics is government. Government starts from the grass roots.” “I think the government belongs to you and me as private citizens.” “I’m calling this trip a crusade. It’s a crusade of the people against the special interests, and if you back me up we’re going to win. . . .”
(“I never gave anybody hell,” he would later say. “I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.”)
Harry Truman on the phrase most associated with him.
But to the managing editor of Life, Joseph J. Thorndike, Jr., the problem centered on bias. “Of course, we did not intentionally mislead our readers,” he wrote. But I do think that we ourselves were misled by our bias. Because of that bias we did not exert ourselves enough to report the side we didn’t believe in.
the editor of Llife in 1948 could be talking about the MSM today.
The day after the election, the staff of the Post had sent a telegram asking him to attend a “Crow Banquet,” to which all newspaper editorial writers, political reporters, pollsters, radio commentators, and columnists would be invited. The main course was to be old crow en glâce. Truman alone would be served turkey. Dress for the guest of honor would be white tie, for the others, sackcloth. In response Truman had written that he had “no desire to crow over anybody or to see anybody eat crow figuratively or otherwise. We should all get together now and make a country in which everybody can eat
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it was the happiest day of his life, “his day of days,” as his daughter would say. “Weather permitting, I hope to be present,” Truman had written in high spirits, in answer to his own invitation to the ceremonies.
Truman RSVP's to his own inaugural
Truman, after some deliberation, picked Dean Acheson to be the next Secretary of State, beginning with the new term. Truman had made the offer to Acheson privately at Blair House. At first speechless, Acheson had said he was not qualified to meet the demands of the office. This, responded Truman, was undoubtedly so, but then he could say the same for himself, or any man. The question was whether he would do the job?
The next time someone offers you a job, Toastmasters, or otherwise, think about President Truman's response to the reply "I do not believe I am qualified..."
In my opinion eight years as President is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in this capacity. 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.
the wisdom of Harry Truman.
Truest of allies, direct in your speech and in your writings and ever a pattern of simple courage . . . (sociorum firmissime, qui missis ambagibus et loqueris et commentaries scribis veraeque constantiae specimen semper dedisti).
Harry Truman was inducted into the fellowship of Oxford university with a Doctor of Civil Laws with these words (spoken in Latin). May we all take what was spoken of him as a challenge to what we should become.
And—not least of all—let us escape from this modern idea of the mass psychologists that we should be guided not by what we honestly believe is wise and right, but by some supposed reflecting of what other people think of us. I am ready to give up the complexity of propaganda, with its mass psychology, in favor of Mark Twain’s simpler admonition: “Always do right. It will please some people and astonish the rest.”
Free speech is a restraint on government; not an incitement to the citizen.
Once in New York, when Ken McCormick of Doubleday had called on him early in the morning at his hotel, Truman had been sitting in a chair in the bedroom with several new books stacked on a table beside him. Did the President like to read himself to sleep at night, McCormick asked. “No, young man,” said Truman, “I like to read myself awake.”
He did not require to be loved. He did not expect to be followed blindly. Congressional opposition never struck him as subversive, nor did he regard his critics as traitors. He never whined. He walked around Washington every morning—it was safe then. He met reporters frequently as a matter of course, and did not blame them for his failures. He did not use the office as a club or a shield, or a hiding place. He worked at it. . . . He said he lived by the Bible and history. So armed, he proved that the ordinary American is capable of grandeur. And that a President can be a human being. . . .
