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Quotes by Dwight D. Eisenhower


A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame - Southern Methodist University game and doesn't care who wins.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Ankles are nearly always neat and good-looking, but knees are nearly always not.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Controlled, universal disarmament is the imperative of our time. The demand for it by the hundreds of millions whose chief concern is the long future of themselves and their children will, I hope, become so universal and so insistent that no man, no government anywhere, can withstand it.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Do not needlessly endanger your lives until I give you the signal.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
From this day forward, the millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
I deplore the need or the use of troops anywhere to get American citizens to obey the orders of constituted courts.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
I don't attempt to be a poker player before this crowd.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
I feel like the fellow in jail who is watching his scaffold being built.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem - and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
I shall make that trip. I shall go to Korea.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the presidency.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
I'm saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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?
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Oh yes, I studied dramatics under him for 12 years.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Only Americans can hurt America.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Our pleasures were simple-they included survival.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Pessimism never won any battle.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Plans are nothing; planning is everything.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
That was not the biggest battle that ever was, but for me it always typified one thing-the dash, the ingenuity, the readiness at the first opportunity that characterizes the American soldier.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it's usually lousy.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
The purpose is clear. It is safety with solvency. The country is entitled to both.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
The sergeant is the Army.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
The United States pledges its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma-to devote its entire heart and mind to finding the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death but consecrated to his life.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
There are a number of things wrong with Washington. One of them is that everyone is too far from home.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
There is no victory at bargain basement prices.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
This desk of mine is one at which a man may die, but from which he cannot resign.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
War settles nothing.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
We have heard much of the phrase, peace and friendship. This phrase, in expressing the aspiration of America, is not complete. We should say instead, peace and friendship, in freedom. This, I think, is America's real message to the rest of the world.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Well, when you come down to it, I don't see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
When you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions that you accept.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
'Worry' is a word that I don't allow myself to use.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower