General Discussion

rpannier

(24,339 posts) Tue Jun 30, 2020, 11:40 PM Jun 2020

Quotes from President Harry Truman for this age

- Not all readers become leaders. But all leaders must be readers.
(Now you know why trump can't lead)

-My own sympathy has always been with the little fellow, the man without advantages.

- Good name and honor are worth more than all the gold and jewels ever mined.

- I don’t believe that because peace is difficult that war is inevitable.

- We can well afford to pay the price of peace. Our only alternative is to pay the terrible cost of war.

- I never sit on a fence. I am either on one side or another.

- Criticism is something [a president] gets every day, just like breakfast.

- Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

- If we wish to inspire the peoples of the world whose freedom is in jeopardy, if we wish to restore hope to those who have already lost their civil liberties, if we wish to fulfill the promise that is ours, we must correct the remaining imperfections in our practice of democracy. We know the way. We need only the will.

- I have had some bitter disappointments as president, but the one that has troubled me the most, in a personal way, has been the failure to defeat organized opposition to a national compulsory health insurance program.

= It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

7 replies

= new reply since forum marked as read

Highlight:

Quotes from President Harry Truman for this age (Original Post) rpannier Jun 2020 OP

K&R UTUSN Jul 2020 #1

While I would never dispute he said this, his later actions prove it to be hyperbole pecosbob Jul 2020 #2

And that's something of a misnomer, too. Aristus Jul 2020 #4

+1 ProfessorGAC Jul 2020 #6

My favorite Truman quote is rsdsharp Jul 2020 #3

K&R for visibility. crickets Jul 2020 #5

Now you've done it! Reader Rabbit Jul 2020 #7

UTUSN

(70,744 posts)

1. K&R

Reply to rpannier (Original post)

Wed Jul 1, 2020, 01:00 AM

Jul 2020

pecosbob

(7,544 posts)

2. While I would never dispute he said this, his later actions prove it to be hyperbole

Reply to rpannier (Original post)

Wed Jul 1, 2020, 01:23 AM

Jul 2020

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

The man basically redesigned the federal government following the war and made it much more efficient and effective at addressing the Nation's needs in the decades to come. I sometimes think we need another Harry Truman* to come in and child-proof our government from our worst angels. A great man.

*E. Warren would be a good choice.

Aristus

(66,467 posts)

4. And that's something of a misnomer, too.

Reply to pecosbob (Reply #2)

Wed Jul 1, 2020, 04:01 PM

Jul 2020

Governments of dictatorships are usually a mess, often deliberately so. Hitler created agencies and bureaucracies with overlapping jurisdictions and vague parameters for operation in order to keep his agency directors squabbling with one another and competing for his favor. He made it so no one dared make an independent decision. He didn't want anyone challenging his power.

As a result, Germany was not put on a total war footing until 1943 when the war was already all but lost.

In Mussolini's Italy, the trains never ran on time, no matter how much Il Duce boasted that they did.

ProfessorGAC

(65,198 posts)

6. +1

Reply to Aristus (Reply #4)

Wed Jul 1, 2020, 05:44 PM

Jul 2020

Any efficiencies in Nazi Germany were the purview of private industry.
Then, some of the overlapping jurisdictions started "helping". Operational efficiencies at Krupp, Bayer, and Fokker all went sideways. Likely others, but those three I read about.
So, the government was never efficient, and they mucked up the efficiency of sympathetic businesses.
Nice plan!