"By the time I prepared to enter college, I was beginning to see myself, as I did for many years afterward, as a Truman Democrat: a liberal Cold Warrior, pro-labor and anti-Communist, like Senators Hubert Humphrey and Henry Jackson and like my Detroit hero Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers. I admired Truman’s action in sending bombers filled with coal and food instead of weapons to resupply the people in Berlin during the Soviet blockade that began the month of my high school graduation. I supported his response two years later to naked Communist aggression in Korea. And I especially appreciated his decision to keep Korea a limited, conventional war, rejecting General Douglas MacArthur’s recommendations to expand the war to China and to use nuclear weapons. Believing in the policy, I was prepared to go to Korea myself, though I had no eagerness for it. After accepting student deferments until I finished Harvard and then for a year’s graduate fellowship at Cambridge University, I felt an obligation to take the place that others had filled for me. On my return from Cambridge, I volunteered for officer candidate school in the Marine Corps in the fall of 1953; the first opening was the following spring."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Presidents of the United StatesPoliticians from MissouriUnited States presidential candidates, 1952United States presidential candidates, 1948Democratic Party (United States) politicians
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions from a Nuclear War Planner (2017)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States (1945–53), an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served as a United States senator from Missouri (1935–45) and briefly as vice president (1945) before he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945 upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was president during the final months of World War II, making the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman was electe
122 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Harry S. Truman →
Related Quotes
"We are in a troublesome period, and some "nonsense" as you term it — but this is a great nation with a high purpose, …"
"I think the greatest asset that the Kremlin has is Senator McCarthy."
"If wars in the future are to be prevented the nations must be united in their determination to keep the peace under l…"
"There are 14 or 15 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their in…"
"He's one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at t…"
"My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth there'…"
"We had been frightened of atomic weapons since 1945. In those days I became convinced — and remain convinced now — th…"
"In bitter despair, some people have come to believe that wars are inevitable. With tragic fatalism, they insist that …"
"My favorite animal is the mule. He has more sense than a horse. He knows when to stop eating — and when to stop working."
"There isn’t any difference between the totalitarian Russian Government and the Hitler government and the Franco gover…"