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Following is a selection of quotations of former President Harry S. Truman:

I have issued a proclamation setting aside Sunday as a day of prayer. After the two days' celebration (of Japan's unconditional surrender) I think we will need the prayer - Aug. 16, 1945. Press conference two days after the Japanese surrender.

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Whenever the press quits abusing me, I know I'm in the wrong pew. - April 17, 1948. Washington

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Never in history has society been confronted with a power so full of promise for the future of amn and for the peace of the world . . . We can use the knowledge we have won, not for the devastation of war, but for the future welfare of humanity. - Oct. 3, 1945, in the atomic bomb message to Congress.

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It all seems to have been in vain. Memories are short and appetites for power and glory are insatiable. Old tyrants depart. New ones take their place. Old allies become the foe. The recent enemy becomes the friend. It is all very baffling and trying, (but) we cannot lose hope, we cannot despair. For it is all too obvious that if we do not abolish war on this earth, then surely, one day, war will abolish us from the earth. - Jan. 25, 1966, Independence, Mo.

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My father was not a failure. After all, he was the father of a President of the United States. - To a reporter who remarked that John Anderson Truman had been a failure; from "Mr. Citizen," 1960.

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McCarthyism . . . the meaning of the word is the corruption of truth, the abandonment of our historical devotion to fair play. It is the abandonment of "due process" of law. It is the use of the big lie and the unfounded accusation against any citizen in the name of Americanism and security . . .

My friends, this is not a partisan matter. This horrible cancer is eating at the vitals of America and it can destroy the great edifice of freedom. - Radio and television address, Nov. 17, 1953. Kansas City, Mo.

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I have said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America. - April 29, 1959. Lecture series, Columbia University.

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I am getting ready to see Stalin and Churchill; and it is a chore. I have to take my tuxedo, tails . . . preacher coat, high hat, low hat and hard hat. - Letter to his mother, July 3, 1945, shortly before the Potsdam Conference.

[[images - 6 black and white photographs of Harry Truman with other men]]