President Truman's Address to the Attorney General's Conference
"The most important business in this Nation--or any other nation, for that matter-is raising and training children. If those children have the proper environment at home, and educationally, very, very few of them ever turn out wrong. I don't think we put enough stress on the necessity of implanting in the child's mind the moral code under which we live.
The fundamental basis of this Nation's law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that enough these days.
If we don't have the proper fundamental moral background, we will finally wind up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the state....."
He went on to say:
"....Now as President of the United States, I have the most honorable and the greatest job in the world--the greatest position that can come to any man on earth. I am invested with certain great powers by the Constitution of the United States in the operation of the Government of the United States. But I was put into this place by the people of the United States. I am the servant of the people. And in the first place, I am a citizen of this great country. And as a citizen it is my duty as President of the United States to be exceedingly careful in obedience to the Constitution and the laws of this great Nation...."
February 15, 1950
Washington D.C.
Posted by Kathryn Currier
posted March 24, 2010
