Top 514 Quotes & Sayings by Dwight D. Eisenhower - Page 4

May we grow in strength — without pride in self. May we, in our dealings with all peoples of the earth, ever speak truth and serve justice. And so shall America — in the sight of all men of good will — prove true to the honorable purposes that bind and rule us as a people in all this time of trial through which we pass.

I believe we must be strong militarily, but beyond a certain point military strength can become a national weakness.

Life is certainly only worthwhile as it represents struggle for worthy causes. There is no struggle in perfect security. I am quite certain that the human being could not continue to exist if he or she had perfect security.

Preparing for battle, plans were essential. But once the battle was joined, plans were useless.

Recognition of the Supreme Being was the first - the most basic - expression of Americanism.

I do not believe that any political campaign justifies the declaration of a moratorium on ordinary common sense.

Men of widely divergent views in our own country live in peace together because they share certain common aspirations which are more important than their differences.... The common responsibility of all Americans is to become effective, helpful participants in a way of life that blends and harmonizes the fiercely competitive demands of the individual and society.

Morale - the will to win, the fighting heart - are the honored hallmarks of the football coach and player. Likewise, they are characteristic of the enterprising executive, the successful troop leader, the established artist and the dedicated teacher and scientist.

The true slogan of a true democracy is not `Let the Government do it' but rather, 'let's do it ourselves'.... This is the spirit of a people dedicated to helping themselves and one another.

A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

Since the advent of nuclear weapons, it seems clear that there is no longer any alternative to peace, if there is to be a happy and well world.

This is a long tough road we have to travel. The men that can do things are going to be sought out just as surely as the sun rises in the morning. Fake reputations, habits of glib and clever speech, and glittering surface performance are going to be discovered.

And now, as in no other age, we seek it [peace] because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself.

The things I saw beggar description ... The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty, and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where there were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a 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".

Now, the education of our children is of national concern, and if they are not educated properly, it is a national calamity.

If progress is to be steady we must have long term guides extending far ahead.

Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.

In order to be a leader a man must have followers. And to have followers, a man must have their confidence.

In the service, when a man gives you his word, his word is binding. In politics, you never know.

We must achieve both security and solvency. In fact, the foundation of military strength is economic strength.

Kinship among nations is not determined in such measurements as proximity of size and age. Rather we should turn to those inner things - call them what you will - I mean those intangibles that are the real treasures free men possess. To preserve his freedom of worship, his equality before law, his liberty to speak and act as he sees fit, subject only to provisions that he trespass not upon similar rights of others - a Londoner will fight. So will a citizen of Abilene. When we consider these things, then the valley of the Thames draws closer to the farms of Kansas and the plains of Texas.

Freedom bestows on us the priceless gift of opportunity - if we neglect our opportunities we shall certainly lose our freedom.

In this hope, among the things we teach to the young are such truths as the transcendent value of the individual and the dignity of all people, the futility and stupidity of war, its destructiveness of life and its degradation of human values.

War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.

America is best described by one word, freedom.

Possibly my hatred of war blinds me so that I cannot comprehend the arguments they adduce. But, in my opinion, there is no such thing as a preventive war. Although this suggestion is repeatedly made, none has yet explained how war prevents war. Worse than this, no one has been able to explain away the fact that war creates the conditions that beget war.

The libraries of America are and must ever remain the home of free and inquiring minds. To them, our citizens-of all ages and races, of all creeds and persuasions-must be able to turn with clear confidence that there they can freely seek the whole truth, unvarnished by fashion and uncompromised by expediency.

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.

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.

I will not get into a pissing contest with that skunk [Joseph McCarthy].

Forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history. Freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark... In the final choice, a soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's chains.

I never saw a pessimistic general win a battle.

Through knowledge and understanding we will drive from the temple of freedom all who seek to establish over us thought control - whether they be agents of a foreign power or demagogues thirsty for personal power and public notice.

All generalizations are inaccurate, including this one.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities ... We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

We cannot risk living all our lives under emergency measures.

I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.

There is no such thing as human superiority.

Before all else, we seek, upon our common labor as a nation, the blessings of Almighty God.

When we get to the point, as we one day will, that both sides know that in any outbreak of general hostilities, regardless of the element of surprise, destruction will be both reciprocal and complete, possibly we will have sense enough to meet at the conference table with the understanding that the era of armaments has ended and the human race must conform its actions to this truth or die.

The world no longer has a choice between force and law; if civilization is to survive, it must choose the rule of law.

... four other pieces of equipment that most senior officers came to regard as among the most vital to our success in Africa and Europe were the bulldozer, the jeep, the 2--ton truck, and the C-47 airplane. Curiously, none of these is designed for combat.

The speed, accuracy and devastating power of American Artillery won confidence and admiration from the troops it supported and inspired fear and respect in their enemy.

Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

No man is worth your tears, but once you find one that is, he won't make you cry.

A voter without a ballot is like a soldier without a bullet.

Fortunately for us and our world, young people are not easily discouraged. The hopes of the world rest on the fresh outlook of young people

If we make ourselves worthy of America's ideals, if we do not forget that our nation was founded on the premise that all men are creatures of God's making, the world will come to know that it is free men who carry forward the true promise of human progress and dignity.

The world must know what happened, and never forget.

[T]he rule of law does more than ensure freedom from high-handed action by rulers. It ensures justice between man and man however humble the one and however powerful the other. A man with five dollars in the bank can call to account the corporation with five billion dollars in assets-and the two will be heard as equals before the law.

...the right of the individual to elect freely the manner of his care in illness must be preserved.

God, I hate the Germans.

When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing. I told him I wanted to be a real Major League baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish.

If you are waging peace, you can't be too particular sometimes about the special attitudes that different countries take. We were a young country once, and our whole policy for the first 150 years was, we were neutral.

Freedom from fear and injustice and oppression will be ours only in the measure that men who value such freedom are ready to sustain its possession - to defend it against every thrust from within or without.

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.

I am inclined by nature to be optimistic about the capacity of a person to rise higher than he or she has thought possible once interest and ambition are aroused.

These are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.

In the highest sense the Bible is to us the unique repository of eternal spiritual truths.

The free world knows, out of the bitter wisdom of experience, that vigilance and sacrifice are the price of liberty.