“He was the best kind of ordinary man, and when I say that he was an ordinary man, I mean that as high praise, not deprecation. That’s the highest praise you can give a man, that he’s one of the people and becomes distinguished in the service that he gives other people. I don’t know of any higher…”Tagged: Abraham Lincoln, Ordinary Man, Distinguished, Ford's Theater, Lincoln's Assassination
“The dictators of the world say that if you tell a lie often enough, why, people will believe it. Well, if you tell the truth often enough, they’ll believe it and go along with you.”Tagged: Dictators, Truth, lying
“I’ll come back to George Washington just long enough to say goodbye to him. He was a great man and a good man, and when his work was over as our great first president, he went back home to Virginia for his long-earned rest. Just three years later, on December 14, 1799, at the age of sixty-seven, he…”Tagged: George Washington, Virginia, Eulogies
“People who run for office and are defeated aren’t rejected in the usual sense of the word. They’re just defeated because they couldn’t get enough votes that one time. It doesn’t mean the public despises them. It’s a preference for somebody else for that particular office at that particular moment,…”Tagged: Politicians, John Quincy Adams
“My definition of a leader in a free country is a man who can persuade people to do what they don’t want to do, or do what they’re too lazy to do, and like it.”Tagged: leader, Persuasion
“I’m not one to insist that a man can’t possibly make it without a lot of formal education, since my own formal education pretty much stopped when I graduated from Independence High School in 1901. And then there was a twenty-two-year gap, while I worked on a farm and as a railroad timekeeper and…”Tagged: Education, Law School, education can change the world
“I once described Washington as a doer surrounded by thinkers. He knew how to make the thinkers work for him, and only a truly superb politician and leader is able to do that.”Tagged: Washington, dC, Doers, Thinkers
“Mrs. Roosevelt seemed calm in her characteristic, graceful dignity. She stepped forward and placed her arm gently about my shoulder. ‘Harry,’ she said quietly, ‘the President is dead.’ For a moment, I could not bring myself to speak. The last news we had had from Warm Springs was that Mr. Roosevelt…”Tagged: Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR, Warm Springs
“If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances. Neither of them thinks anything of their pledged word.”Tagged: German, Russia, Nazis, Soviets, Playing Both Sides
“It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in our country’s efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to insure that all Americans enjoy these…”Tagged: Freedom, Equality, citizens, Americans, rights
“The Russians are liars – you can't trust them. At Potsdam they agreed to everything and broke their word. It's too bad the second world power is like this, but that's the way it is, and we must keep our strength.”Tagged: russians, liars, Potsdam, strength
“The Russians are like us, they look and act like us. They are fine people. They got along with our soldiers in Berlin very well. As far as I am concerned, they can have whatever they want just so they don't try to impose their system on others.”Tagged: russians, Nazis, Soviets, Berlin, Communism
“All of you, I am sure, have heard many cries about Government interference with business and about ‘creeping socialism.’ I should like to remind the gentlemen who make these complaints that if events had been allowed to continue as they were going prior to March 4, 1933, most of them would have no…”Tagged: Socialism, Big Government, New Deal
“The Republicans favor a minimum wage — the smaller the minimum the better.”Tagged: Republicans, Minimum Wage
“The people can never understand why the President does not use his powers to make them behave. Well all the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.”Tagged: President, Presidential Powers, Public Relations, flattering, Kissing
“Mr. Luce, you've asked a fair question and I'll give you a fair answer. I've been in politics thirty-five years and everything that could be said about a human being has been said about me. But my wife has never been in politics. She has always conducted herself in a circumspect manner and no one…”Tagged: White House, Bess Truman, Henry Luce
“No nation on this globe should be more internationally minded than America because it was built by all nations.”Tagged: America, Globalism, Nations