Top 514 Quotes & Sayings by Dwight D. Eisenhower - Page 2

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

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.

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

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.

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

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

I deplore the need or the use of troops anywhere to get American citizens to obey the orders of constituted courts.

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

Our pleasures were simple - they included survival.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

There is no victory at bargain basement prices.

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.

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.

There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.

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.

Well, when you come down to it, I don't see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?

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

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

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

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

Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.

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

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

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

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

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.

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

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

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

How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.

Some day there is going to be a man sitting in my present chair who has not been raised in the military services and who will have little understanding of where slashes in their estimates can be made with little or no damage. If that should happen while we still have the state of tension that now exists in the world, I shudder to think of what could happen in this country

Teachers need our active support and encouragement. They are doing one of the most necessary and exacting jobs in the land. They are developing our most precious national resource: our children, our future citizens.

The only way to win World War III is to prevent it.

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. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Leadership is the ability to decide what is to be done and then get others to do it.

Our best protection against bigger government in Washington is better government in the states.

The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.

For every obstacle there is a solution. Persistence is the key. The greatest mistake is giving up!

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.

Never let yourself be persuaded that any one Great Man, any one leader, is necessary to the salvation of America. When America consists of one leader and 158 million followers, it will no longer be America.

Never lose your temper, except intentionally.

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. There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

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.

Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.

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. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

And I should like to assure you, my Islamic friends, that under the American Constitution, under American tradition, and in American hearts, this Center, this place of worship, is just as welcome as could be a similar edifice of any other religion. Indeed, America would fight with her whole strength for your right to have here your own church and worship according to your own conscience. This concept is indeed a part of America, and without that concept we would be something else than what we are.

We the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve

The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.