Harry S. Truman Quotes

What does it mean to be an American? While each of us may have our own specific answer to that question, we likely can agree on the basic principles of America: freedom, equal opportunity, and rights accompanied by responsibilities.

In America, our origins matter less than our destinations and that is what democracy is all about.

Outside of America, there are many people, myself included, who champion values that in some senses could be thought of as traditionally American: The idea that everybody is equal; the idea that the rights of women and men should be the same.

At this moment in history, we are called to act as if we truly believe that liberty and justice for all is a desirable thing.

Equality is the heart and essence of democracy, freedom, and justice, equality of opportunity in industry, in labor unions, schools and colleges, government, politics, and before the law. There must be no dual standards of justice, no dual rights, privileges, duties, or responsibilities of citizenship. No dual forms of freedom.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.

What is the American dream? The American dream is one big tent. One big tent. And on that big tent you have four basic promises: equal protection under the law, equal opportunity, equal access, and fair share.

A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.

We can continue our progress as a Nation toward the promise that all people are created equal and that our Nation will treat every person in that spirit.

The true republic: men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.

In this nation, the greatest of all nations, there are no second-class families. That is our great American conviction.

What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal - that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.

Moral principles of liberty that endow a person with the right to claim and acquire property at the same time oblige that person to respect every other person’s equal right to do the same.

One man’s right is every man’s right.

I hope that liberty and equality and opportunity lie within your heart because the hopes of millions of Americans depend on it.

This democracy is shaped by equality of opportunity.

The promise of our country is that the rules are fair.

Nowhere in the world is presented a government of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poorest amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions.

Here everyone is his own master. Civil liberty places all inhabitants on an equal footing. The humble cannot be oppressed by the mighty, nor the poor by the rich.

There is what I call the American idea. I so name it, because it seems to me to lie at the basis of all our truly original, distinctive, and American institutions. It is itself a complex idea, composed of three subordinate and more simple ideas, namely: The idea that all men have unalienable rights; that in respect thereof, all men are created equal; and that government is to be established and sustained for the purpose of giving every man an opportunity for the enjoyment and development of all these unalienable rights. This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government after the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake, I will call it the idea of Freedom.

What is life without liberty; and what is liberty without equality of rights?

For me, it's simple: everybody deserves the same rights.

We want equality for everyone and justice when it's time for that.

Our country has an opportunity to live up to our title as the leaders of the free world and to live up to our potential as being a beacon of freedom and hope and democracy - but not while that opportunity is not equal for everyone.

Nobody's lesser or greater; that's what our Constitution is about.