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I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them ... that's all the powers of the President amount to.

— Harry S. Truman Attributed Richard Neustadt in Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership (1964)

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More quotes by Harry S. Truman

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.

Announcing the Bombing of Hiroshima (1945)

If wars in the future are to be prevented the nations must be united in their determination to keep the peace under law.

Address to Congress (1945)

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

No government is perfect. One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected.

Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Harry S. Truman (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.