Truman Quotes

"I don`t think there was any Reagan revolution. This country is based, its economy is based, on free enterprise. The government`s based on a constitutional democracy. And all Reagan did was to continue what Harry Truman did and George Washington started."

For The Truman Show, I worked for a few weeks, do my gig, then I was done.

(On her character in The Truman Show (1998)): The concept of The Truman Show - it was so much fun. What gave us all an additional challenge was that those of us who were the cast play the actors but playing a role. So we did all this elaborate back-story. So I made up my actress name Hanna Gill, who plays Meryl Burbank, who is married to Truman Burbank. So we did all this double layering of character work not really knowing what was going to come through. I`m glad that some of the people who have seen the movie can say that they can actually see it in all of us. All of us who play the characters surrounding Jim (Jim Carrey) in the film, that they can see the double layer.

(On her character on The Truman Show (1998)): Well the thing that was interesting was that we sort of did these back stories about these characters and where they were and what was going on with them. And when the movie picks up, Hanna Gill, who plays Meryl Burbank, is aware of the fact that she is losing her influence over Truman. He`s not happy at home. He`s beginning to get agitated. He`s beginning to think of things outside the house, and she can feel that she is losing her power. So consequently the smile gets bigger and bigger and the desperation, that is why there is that intense undertow to her. Because she knows she is losing it.

It was immediately apparent that it was full of tricky ingredients to balance. In fact, I found it very intriguing. What held me back from saying yes to the producer was that I wasn`t sure who could play Truman.

My favorite monologue in the book is Kate Harrington`s story of her relationship with Truman.

I would like to say that no man ever was given finer cooperation than that given me by President Truman.

At the time it seriously troubled me, but in drafting me as Marshall Plan Administrator, President Truman did as great a favor for me as one man can do for another. It opened my eyes to many things of which I was totally unaware and it was the beginning of my real education.

At one point American peace sentiment helped to stop Truman from pursuing use of the atom bomb in Korea and helped force the recall of MacArthur.

Jimmy Carter as President is like Truman Capote marrying Dolly Parton. The job is just too big for him.

Well, you know what, I`m 60 years old, and I`ve been interested in politics since I was on my daddy`s knee. During the 1948 election, we were praying for Truman. I know a lot about politics.

My biggest mistake, going back to The Truman Show, was that I wrote my most expensive film first. And you just shouldn`t do that. I remember talking to the studio head at the time and she said, There`s no way for a first film that we`ll give you a budget of $80 million. But we would give you $20 million." So I went off and wrote Gattaca and made sure it was $20 million. So they let me make it."

My lasting impression of Truman Capote is that he was a terribly gentle, terribly sensitive, and terribly sad man.

Basically the first half-hour of the opera is an extended prologue, which is all material from the first two weeks of July 1945, ... Germany has just capitulated. Truman is meeting Stalin at Potsdam, which is where all this pressure comes from for the test to work. Oppenheimer has been in these meetings in Washington to select the target, and it`s full steam ahead to Japan.

I am the heterosexual Truman Capote.

Mr. Truman studiously avoided giving power to his White House staff that has been characteristic of recent administrations. Staff people in the White House, with no responsibility but incredible authority is one of the reasons we`re now in so much trouble.

That was just a real determined Truman team. We warned the kids they were going to make a run. They came in and made adjustments, and we panicked toward the end.

He had more stamina than I will ever have. He came in with Roosevelt in 1932 and served two years under Harry Truman and they had a falling out, and my father, I think, quit about two minutes before Harry Truman fired him,

We need to tell the whole Truman story in Independence.