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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
An intellectual is a man
who takes more words than necessary
to tell more than he knows.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I'm saving that rocker for the day
when I feel as old as I really am.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
How far you can go without destroying from within
what you are trying to defend from without?
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Worry" is a word that I don't allow myself to use.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child.
Things never get back to the way they were.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The world moves, and ideas that were
once good are not always good.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Pessimism never won any battle.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts
by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
In preparing for battle I have always found that
plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I deplore the need or the use of troops anywhere
to get American citizens to obey
the orders of constituted courts.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address of January, 17 1961
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
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish.
Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
History does not long entrust the care of freedom
to the weak or the timid.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I shall make that trip. I shall go to Korea.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem -
and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Some people wanted champagne and caviar
when they should have had beer and hot dogs.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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
The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant
leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Together we must learn how to compose differences,
not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The problem in defense is
how far you can go without destroying from within
what you are trying to defend from without.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The purpose is clear. It is safety with solvency.
The country is entitled to both.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower {political}
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Well, when you come down to it,
I don't see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
There is nothing wrong with America
that faith, love of freedom, intelligence,
and energy of her citizens cannot cure.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can,
only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
When people speak to you about a preventive war,
you tell them to go fight it.
After my experience, I have come to hate war.
War settles nothing.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
There is no person in this room whose basic rights
are not involved in any successful defiance
to the carrying out of court orders.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Only Americans can hurt America.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Motivation is the art of getting people to do
what you want them to do because they want to do it.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
What counts is not necessarily
the size of the dog in the fight -
it's the size of the fight in the dog.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower quoting Mark Twain
Any man who wants to be president
is either an egomaniac or crazy.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil
and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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
This desk of mine is one at which a man may die,
but from which he cannot resign.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
War settles nothing.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
When you put on a uniform,
there are certain inhibitions that you accept.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The sergeant is the Army.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
There is no victory at bargain basement prices.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Though force can protect in emergency,
only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation
can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
There are a number of things wrong with Washington.
One of them is that everyone is too far from home.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
We will bankrupt ourselves in
the vain search for absolute security.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Our pleasures were simple - they included survival.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength,
and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
You don't lead by hitting people over the head -
that's assault, not leadership.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Unlike presidential administrations,
problems rarely have terminal dates.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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?
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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May the world be kind to you,
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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