Dwight D. Eisenhower Quotes
34th U.S. President
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.
Plans are nothing; planning is everything.
Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
This world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.
Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.
Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.
You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.
Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.
I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.
Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.
I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.
If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.
Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.
Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.
Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.
Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
Only Americans can hurt America.
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.
When you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions that you accept.
In most communities it is illegal to cry 'fire' in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem - and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man's intelligence and his comprehension... would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.
Pessimism never won any battle.
The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it's usually lousy.
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
I deplore the need or the use of troops anywhere to get American citizens to obey the orders of constituted courts.
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
I shall make that trip. I shall go to Korea.
There is no victory at bargain basement prices.
It is far more important to be able to hit the target than it is to haggle over who makes a weapon or who pulls a trigger.
Our pleasures were simple - they included survival.
The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!
No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know.
I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new-one which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use. That new language is the language of atomic warfare.
The sergeant is the Army.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.
The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.
Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the presidency.
If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order.
In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains.
Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.
Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
From behind the Iron Curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as its surface is hard.
I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn't know it then.
This desk of mine is one at which a man may die, but from which he cannot resign.
Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.
When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were - to the very last minute - a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.
Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.
Ankles are nearly always neat and good-looking, but knees are nearly always not.
We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.
'Worry' is a word that I don't allow myself to use.
The purpose is clear. It is safety with solvency. The country is entitled to both.
There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.
I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.
I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens.
How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?
The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good.
Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.
You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.
The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.
An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame - Southern Methodist University game and doesn't care who wins.
Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.
Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.
When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.
Our forces saved the remnants of the Jewish people of Europe for a new life and a new hope in the reborn land of Israel. Along with all men of good will, I salute the young state and wish it well.
Well, when you come down to it, I don't see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?
Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
War settles nothing.
The United States strongly seeks a lasting agreement for the discontinuance of nuclear weapons tests. We believe that this would be an important step toward reduction of international tensions and would open the way to further agreement on substantial measures of disarmament.
There are a number of things wrong with Washington. One of them is that everyone is too far from home.
The people of the world genuinely want peace. Some day the leaders of the world are going to have to give in and give it to them.
I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem - and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.