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, speech, Jul. 12, 1945
If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech, Mar. 6, 1956
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. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, farewell address, Jan. 17, 1961
The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice--their choice.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech, Oct. 9, 1956
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1953
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech, Jan. 10, 1946
Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech, Jun. 14, 1953
In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, attributed, Six Crises
No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech, Apr. 16, 1953
To be true to one’s own freedom is, in essence, to honor and respect the freedom of all others.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, State of the Union Address, Feb. 2, 1953
If progress is to be steady we must have long term guides extending far ahead.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, State of the Union Address, Jan. 9, 1959
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. And now, as in no other age, we seek it because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, Second Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 1957
With both sides of this divided world in possession of unbelievably destructive weapons, mankind approaches a state where mutual annihilation becomes a possibility. No other fact of today's world equals this in importance—it colors everything we say, plan, and do.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, State of the Union Address, Jan. 7, 1960
We could make no more tragic mistake than merely to concentrate on military strength. For if we did only this, the future would hold nothing for the world but an Age of Terror.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, State of the Union Address, Jan. 9, 1958
May the light of freedom, coming to all darkened lands, flame brightly--until at last the darkness is no more.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, Second Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 1957
Inflation is not a Robin Hood, taking from the rich to give to the poor. Rather, it deals most cruelly with those who can least protect themselves. It strikes hardest those millions of our citizens whose incomes do not quickly rise with the cost of living. When prices soar, the pensioner and the widow see their security undermined, the man of thrift sees his savings melt away; the white collar worker, the minister, and the teacher see their standards of living dragged down.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, State of the Union Address, Jan. 9, 1959
As our heart summons our strength, our wisdom must direct it.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, state of the Union Address, Feb. 2, 1953
we now stand in the vestibule of a vast new technological age-one that, despite its capacity for human destruction, has an equal capacity to make poverty and human misery obsolete. If our efforts are wisely directed—and if our unremitting efforts for dependable peace begin to attain some success—we can surely become participants in creating an age characterized by justice and rising levels of human well-being.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, State of the Union Address, Jan. 7, 1960
There must be law, steadily invoked and respected by all nations, for without law, the world promises only such meager justice as the pity of the strong upon the weak.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, Second Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 1957
The only answer to a regime that wages total cold war is to wage total peace.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, State of the Union Address, Jan. 9, 1958
Unless we progress, we regress.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, State of the Union Address, Jan. 9, 1959
To remain secure and prosperous themselves, wealthy nations must extend the kind of cooperation to the less fortunate members that will inspire hope, confidence and progress. A rich nation can for a time, without noticeable damage to itself, pursue a course of self- indulgence, making its single goal the material ease and comfort of its own citizens-thus repudiating its own spiritual and material stake in a peaceful and prosperous society of nations. But the enmities it will incur, the isolation into which it will descend, and the internal moral and physical softness that will be engendered, will, in the long term, bring it to disaster.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, State of the Union Address, Jan. 7, 1960
The unity of all who dwell in freedom is their only sure defense.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, Second Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, 1957
Military power serves the cause of security by making prohibitive the cost of any aggressive attack. It serves the cause of peace by holding up a shield behind which the patient constructive work of peace can go on.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, State of the Union Address, Jan. 9, 1958
Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, letter to Leonard V. Finder, Jan. 22, 1948
The day will come when the people will make so insistent their demand that there be peace in the world that the Governments will get out of the way and let them have peace.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, broadcast discussion, Aug. 31, 1959
Un-American activity cannot be prevented or routed out by employing un-American methods; to preserve freedom we must use the tools that freedom provides.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, The White House Years
A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled, the transportation systems destroyed, sanitation implements and systems all gone? That isn't preventive war; that is war.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, news conference, Aug. 11, 1954
The hand of the aggressor is stayed by strength--and strength alone.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech, Jul. 3, 1951
Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, attributed, Stars: A Study in Military Character and Leadership
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, Time Magazine, Oct. 6, 1952
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1953
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, letter to Edgar Newton Eisenhower, November 8, 1954
War settles nothing.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, Quote Magazine, Apr. 4, 1965
Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in this world must first come to pass in the heart of America.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1953
Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech in Peoria, Illinois, Sep. 25, 1956
By leadership we mean the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, attributed, The Federal Career Service: A Look Ahead
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, speech, Apr. 16, 1953
Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they never existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, Commencement Address at Dartmouth College, 1953
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, press conference, April 7, 1954
I believe that for the past twenty years there has been a creeping socialism spreading in the United States.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech to Republican leaders in Custer State Park, South Dakota, June 11, 1953
With 450,000 U.S. troops now in Vietnam, it is time that Congress decided whether or not to declare a state of war exists with North Vietnam. Previous congressional resolutions of support provide only limited authority. Although Congress may decide that the previously approved resolution on Vietnam given President Johnson is sufficient, the issue of a declaration of war should at least be put before the Congress for decision.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, The Washington Post, July 22, 1967
Will outer space be preserved for peaceful use and developed for the benefit of all mankind? Or will it become another focus for the arms race--and thus an area of dangerous and sterile competition? The choice is urgent. And it is ours to make. The nations of the world have recently united in declaring the continent of Antarctica "off limits" to military preparations. We could extend this principle to an even more important sphere. National vested interests have not yet been developed in space or in celestial bodies. Barriers to agreement are now lower than they will ever be again.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City, September 22, 1960
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, State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress, January 9, 1958
The system is not intended as a substitute for private savings, pension plans, and insurance protection. It is, rather, intended as the foundation upon which these other forms of protection can be soundly built. Thus, the individual's own work, his planning and his thrift will bring him a higher standard of living upon his retirement, or his family a higher standard of living in the event of his death, than would otherwise be the case. Hence the system both encourages thrift and self-reliance, and helps to prevent destitution in our national life.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech, January 14, 1954
I make it a practice to avoid hating anyone. If someone's been guilty of despicable actions, especially toward me, I try to forget him. I used to follow a practice--somewhat contrived, I admit--to write the man's name on a piece of scrap paper, drop it into the lowest drawer of my desk, and say to myself: "That finishes the incident, and so far as I'm concerned, that fellow." The drawer became over the years a sort of private wastebasket for crumbled-up spite and discarded personalities.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends
The things I saw beggar description... The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were . . . overpowering. . . . I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to "propaganda."
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, attributed, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
You do not lead by hitting people over the head. That's assault, not leadership.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, attributed, Quotable Quotes
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