Dwight D. Eisenhower quotes:

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  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

  • An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame - Southern Methodist University game and doesn't care who wins.

  • 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.

  • The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.

  • 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?

  • Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.

  • 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.

  • In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

  • There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • There are a number of things wrong with Washington. One of them is that everyone is too far from home.

  • Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.

  • There is no victory at bargain basement prices.

  • Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.

  • Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.

  • War settles nothing.

  • 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.

  • 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'm saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am.

  • Well, when you come down to it, I don't see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?

  • Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

  • 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.

  • The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!

  • 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.

  • We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.

  • 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.

  • Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.

  • Ankles are nearly always neat and good-looking, but knees are nearly always not.

  • A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

  • 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.

  • Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.

  • We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

  • Never send a battalion to take a hill if a regiment is available.

  • 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?

  • Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in blood of his followers and sacrifices of his friends.

  • 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.

  • Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.

  • War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.

  • I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the presidency.

  • No battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever won without one.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you.

  • The one weapon every man, soldier, sailor, or airman should be able to use effectively is the rifle. It is always his weapon of personal safety in an emergency, and for many it is the primary weapon of offence and defense. Expertness in its use cannot be over emphasized.

  • People talk about the middle of the road as though it were unacceptable. Actually, all human problems, excepting morals, come into the gray areas. Things are not all black and white. There have to be compromises. The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.

  • Before all else, we seek, upon our common labor as a nation, the blessings of Almighty God.

  • I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

  • Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the most basic, expression of Americanism. Thus, the founding fathers of America saw it, and thus with God's help, it will continue to be.

  • We have won an armistice on a single battlefield, not peace in our world. We may not now relax our guard nor cease our quest.

  • What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.

  • The qualities of a great man are vision, integrity, courage, understanding, the power of articulation, and profundity of character.

  • The speed, accuracy and devastating power of American Artillery won confidence and admiration from the troops it supported and inspired fear and respect in their enemy.

  • You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.

  • We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method.

  • When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing. I told him I wanted to be a real Major League baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish.

  • Not making the baseball team at West Point was one of the greatest disappointments of my life, maybe my greatest.

  • I am inclined by nature to be optimistic about the capacity of a person to rise higher than he or she has thought possible once interest and ambition are aroused.

  • There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

  • Don't join the book burners... Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book.

  • ... four other pieces of equipment that most senior officers came to regard as among the most vital to our success in Africa and Europe were the bulldozer, the jeep, the 2--ton truck, and the C-47 airplane. Curiously, none of these is designed for combat.

  • You can't have this kind of war. There just aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.

  • History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

  • Help the Cubans to the utmost counseling his successor while handing over the reins. We cannot let Castro's government go on.

  • I firmly believe that the army of persons who urge greater and greater centralization of authority and greater and greater dependence upon the Federal Treasury are really more dangerous to our form of government than any external threat that can possibly be arrayed against us.

  • The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good.

  • Speeches are for the younger men who are going places. And I'm not going anyplace except six feet under the floor of that little chapel adjoining the museum and library at Abilene.

  • My constant prayer, these days, as I start my backswing is, 'Oh, please let me swing slowly.' The trouble is that sometimes I wonder whether I swing at all; whether I am not strictly a chopper.

  • 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.

  • No amphibious attack in history has approached this one in size. Along miles of coastline there were hundreds of vessels and small boats afloat and ant-like files of advancing troops ashore.

  • Through unity of action we can be a veritable colossus in support of peace. No one can defeat us unless we first defeat ourselves. Every one of us must be guided by this truth.

  • A constitutional amendment for congressional term limits could never achieve the blessing of Congress; it could be initiated only by the states.

  • Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to them.

  • Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.

  • Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.

  • The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities ... We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

  • There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.

  • ...the right of the individual to elect freely the manner of his care in illness must be preserved.

  • Only a fool would try to deprive working men and working women of their right to join the union of their choice.

  • The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

  • May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

  • 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.

  • Disorganization can scarcely fail to result in efficiency.

  • Organizations cannot make a genius out of an incompetent. On the other hand, disorganization can scarcely fail to result in efficiency.

  • Legislation to apply the principle of equal pay for equal work without discrimination because of sex is a matter of simple justice

  • We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

  • Extremes to the right and to the left of any political dispute are always wrong.

  • The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth. The Bible is endorsed by the ages. Our civilization is built upon its words. In no other book is there such a collection of inspired wisdom, reality, and hope.

  • If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.

  • Why don't you lay the footpaths where the students want to walk?

  • Probably no one here knows I coached a football team - a service team - playing against Georgetown. I think it was in the fall of 1924 Lou Little was your coach, and he beat us. But it was a very happy circumstance, because it brought me the friendship of another man, Lou Little, who to this day remains my very warm associate and friend.

  • A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.

  • I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.

  • The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.

  • In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains.

  • There is -- in world affairs -- a steady course to be followed between an assertion of strength that is truculent and a confession of helplessness that is cowardly.

  • This is what I found out about religion: It gives you courage to make the decisions you must make in a crisis, and then the confidence to leave the result to a higher Power. Only by trust in God can a man carrying responsibility find repose.

  • Only Americans can hurt America.

  • I feel like the fellow in jail who is watching his scaffold being built." (On construction of reviewing stands for inauguration of his successor John F Kennedy)

  • Men of widely divergent views in our own country live in peace together because they share certain common aspirations which are more important than their differences.... The common responsibility of all Americans is to become effective, helpful participants in a way of life that blends and harmonizes the fiercely competitive demands of the individual and society.

  • When you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions that you accept.

  • Freedom from fear and injustice and oppression will be ours only in the measure that men who value such freedom are ready to sustain its possession - to defend it against every thrust from within or without.

  • The libraries of America are and must ever remain the home of free and inquiring minds. To them, our citizens-of all ages and races, of all creeds and persuasions-must be able to turn with clear confidence that there they can freely seek the whole truth, unvarnished by fashion and uncompromised by expediency.

  • We believe that our truly urgent need is to make our nation secure, our economy strong and our dollar sound. For every American this matter of the sound dollar is crucial. Without a sound dollar, every American family would face a renewal of inflation, an ever-increasing cost of living, the withering away of savings and life insurance policies.

  • An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

  • The United States pledges before you-and therefore before the world-its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma-to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.

  • 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 will not get into a pissing contest with that skunk [Joseph McCarthy].

  • I have just realized that it is due to you, and to Mr. James Thomas and his staff of the Army Navy Country Club that the putting green here on the White House lawn is already in such excellent condition. I assure you that I get a great deal of pleasure and relaxation out of using the green in an occasional late afternoon hour . . .

  • Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.

  • Through knowledge and understanding we will drive from the temple of freedom all who seek to establish over us thought control - whether they be agents of a foreign power or demagogues thirsty for personal power and public notice.

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