I have tried my best to give the nation everything I had in me. There are probably a million people who could have done the job better than I did it, but I had the job and I always quote an epitaph on a tombstone in a cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona: "Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damndest."

It's not the hand that signs the laws that holds the destiny of America. It's the hand that casts the ballot.

Doing the right thing is easy. [It is] much more difficult [to...] figure out what [the right thing] is.

It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.

Leadership is getting people to do things that they don't want to do.

Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed. The fantastically crowded nine months of 1945 taught me that a President either is constantly on top of events or, if he hesitates, events will soon be on top of him. I never felt I could let up for a single moment.

If you want to live like a Republican, you've got to vote for a Democrat.