Famous Quotes

Quotes by Dwight D Eisenhower

• A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
• An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
• I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
• I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem - and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
• I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem - and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
• 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.
• 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 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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?
• 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.
• Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
• Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
• 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.
• Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.
• Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.
• Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.
• 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.
• Our real problem, then, is not our strength today it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.
• Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
• Politics is a profession a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.
• 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.
• The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it's usually lousy.
• The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice their choice!
• The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.
• 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.