Top 514 Quotes & Sayings by Dwight D. Eisenhower

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American president Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, and achieved the five-star rank of General of the Army. He planned and supervised the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–1943 and the invasion of Normandy from the Western Front in 1944–1945.

I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.
You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin. — © Dwight D. Eisenhower
Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
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.
When you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions that you accept.
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.
There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.
The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!
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.
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
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
Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.
The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it's usually lousy.
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.
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.
Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.
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.
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.
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.
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.
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
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.
Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.
War settles nothing.
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.
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.
Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.
Pessimism never won any battle.
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
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.
There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.
Only Americans can hurt America.
Plans are nothing; planning is everything.
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.
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.
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg. — © Dwight D. Eisenhower
Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.
Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.
Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.
No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.
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.
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 hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
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.
The sergeant is the Army.
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.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
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