Words matter. These are the best Dwight D. Eisenhower Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.
In the final choice a soldier’s pack is not so heavy as a prisoner’s chains.
Well, when you come down to it, I don’t see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?
Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.
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.
The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it’s usually lousy.
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.
Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.
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.
No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know.
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.
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.
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
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.
I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the presidency.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.
The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.
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.
There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.
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.
Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past.
Don’t join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
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.
‘Worry’ is a word that I don’t allow myself to use.
The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!
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.
Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
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.
Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
Pessimism never won any battle.
The sergeant is the Army.
Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?
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.
Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.
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.
Only Americans can hurt America.
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.
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.
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.
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.
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
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.
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 you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions that you accept.
Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.
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.
