Truman

by David McCullough

In Missouri he was known as a “freedom” soldier, meaning he would free you of anything he could lay his hands on—food,

The men were saying they would give Oklahoma to the Germans and call it even.

curiosity people who want to see what a V.P. looks like and if he walks and talks and has teeth.

For him to go anywhere was “like moving a circus,” he said.

That is according to the “kept” press and the opposition leadership “cheap politics.” I wonder what “expensive politics” will be like!

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.

Truman believed and often said that how a person stood in history had a lot to do with the timing of his death.

“I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he’d taken a poll in Egypt?” he wrote privately, in an undated memo to himself. “What would Jesus Christ have preached if he’d taken a poll in Israel? . . . It isn’t polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It’s right and wrong.”

It is remarkable indeed how time flies and makes you an old man whether you want to be or not.

whom you should trust as much as you would a rattlesnake with the silencer on its rattle.

Miller was reminded of Huck Finn’s comment about Mark Twain, “He told the truth, mainly. There were things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.”