Harry Truman: 7 quotes for his birthday

When Harry S. Truman assumed the presidency after Franklin Delano Roosevelt's death, he became the 33rd President of the United States, and led the US through the conclusion of WWII before being elected for a second term. Initially Truman was unpopular with some Americans who viewed him as not quite equal to the highest job in the land. Today, however, Truman is widely viewed as one of the most beloved presidents in US history. His folksy sense of humor and political grit are exemplified by a selection of aphorisms in "Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists" by James Geary. 

1. Lively politics

Tom [Public domain], PD US Military, via Wikimedia Commons

"A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who’s been dead for fifteen years."

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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