Dwight D. Eisenhower Quotes
American - President October 14, 1890 - March 28, 1969

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

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

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

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

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.
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
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

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

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
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

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

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

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

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

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
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

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

'Worry' is a word that I don't allow myself to use.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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.
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

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

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

Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.
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

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Ankles are nearly always neat and good-looking, but knees are nearly always not.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.
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

Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem - and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

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

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
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

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

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

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

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Only Americans can hurt America.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know.
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

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.
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
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

There is no victory at bargain basement prices.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
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

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

War settles nothing.
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

Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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.
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

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

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

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

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Pessimism never won any battle.
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

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

Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

This desk of mine is one at which a man may die, but from which he cannot resign.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

I shall make that trip. I shall go to Korea.
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

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

Our pleasures were simple - they included survival.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
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

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

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?
Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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.
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

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

The sergeant is the Army.
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

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

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

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

The purpose is clear. It is safety with solvency. The country is entitled to both.
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 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

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

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

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

The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
Dwight D. Eisenhower