Harry S. Truman Quotes

The Cold War began with the division of Europe. It can only end when Europe is whole.

World War II and the ensuing Cold War compelled the United States to develop a sustained commitment to Western Europe and the Far East.

After World War II, we awoke to find our wartime ally, Stalin, had emerged as a greater enemy than Germany or Japan. Stalin's empire stretched from the Elbe to the Pacific.

Germany's fate is decided first and foremost in Europe. Reconciliation and cooperation in Europe have brought us freedom, peace and prosperity. Who would have dared to believe so much 50 years ago?

[Writing of Harry Truman:] The 1947 assumption of responsibility in the Eastern Mediterranean, the 1948 grandeur of the Marshall Plan, the response to the blockade of Berlin, the NATO defense of Europe in 1949, and the intervention in Korea in 1950—all those constituted expanded action in truly heroic mold. All of them required rare capacity to decide and act.

The last time you and I sat across a conference table in Potsdam [July-August, 1945], I must confess Sir, I held you in very low regard. I loathed your taking the place of Franklin Roosevelt. I misjudged you badly. Since that time, you more than any other man have saved Western Civilization.

One of my American heroes is the great former U.S. diplomat George Kennan.

Think of Europe in the 20th century. Two World Wars generated by nationalism. France, Germany, Britain fighting with each other.

Truman is now seen as a near-great president because he put in place the containment doctrine boosted by the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan and NATO, which historians now see as having been at the center of American success in the cold war.

Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of.

Roosevelt was determined to stop Stalin from taking over Eastern Europe. He thought they finally had an agreement on Poland. Before Roosevelt died, he realized that Stalin had broken his agreement.

The Iron Curtain may be a thing of the past, but Mother Russia is as mysterious as ever.

My favourite president, and the one I admired most, was Harry Truman.

Historians don't really like to carry on speculative debates, but you could certainly argue that the likelihood of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe was extremely, extremely low.

In the 1950s, Pakistan allied with the United States in something called the Central Treaty Organization. We were lined up with, at that time, Iran, ruled by the Shah, and Pakistan and Turkey as a southward shield against Soviet expansion toward the warm waters of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. It was part of the containment strategy.

Soviet expansionism in Europe, the battle for control of China, and the 1950 invasion of South Korea would shatter once-euphoric dreams of post-war cooperation with the Kremlin.

The Russians saw the Marshall Plan as inimical; to their strategic interest in Europe if it worked. They galvanized all the communist parties in the world to oppose it.

After World War II, the United States became the world’s undisputed leader, first by providing markets for the recovering European and Asian economies but also by offering international security.

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.

I was born in Allied-controlled Pola. At the end of World War II, the victorious wartime Allied powers negotiated the details of peace treaties and borders with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland. The Paris Treaty was signed on February 10, 1947. I was born a few days later.

Certainly my parents were very political, so the whole Berlin Wall thing - and being a kid of the '80s - that's just something that's in your experience.

Even today, a majority of people surveyed say that they regret the fact that the USSR collapsed. But only 9 percent say that they would want it back.

Here in Europe, I think that there are a lot of young people who forget the issues that were at stake during the Cold War.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

The United States was proud to stand with the people of Germany as this nation and this continent reunited and rebuilt and reached for a better future.