“His election was a personal victory almost without historical parallel; a victory of the fighting spirit. Whatever their politics, the nation’s common people found in his election a great emotional satisfaction. He had humbled the confident, discomfited the savants and the pollsters, and given a new luster to the old-fashioned virtues of work and dogged courage. The year 1948 was Harry Truman’s year.”
—From the January 3, 1949 issue of TIME magazine
“It was no scientist who, by historic accident, somewhat unwittingly, somewhat against his own will, became more than any other man responsible for the bomb, its use in 1945 and its future. It was an ordinary, uncurious man without any pretensions to scientific knowledge, without many pretensions of any kind, a man of average size and weight, wearing bifocal glasses, fond of plain food, whiskey-&-water and lodge meetings. It was Harry Truman, 32nd President of the U.S.”
—From the December 31, 1945 issue of TIME magazine