Top 100 Eisenhower's Quotes
#1. Winston Churchill had grasped Eisenhower's hand and told him, with tears in his eyes, I am with you to the end, and if it fails we will go down together.
Robert M. Edsel
#2. Influence is getting others to do what you want them to do because they want to do it - a take on Eisenhower's famous leadership statement
Phil Harding
#3. Along with the GI Bill, which educated and housed Eisenhower's fellow veterans, the Interstate System has proved to be by far the most important economic-development strategy of the federal government.
David S. Broder
#4. Dwight Eisenhower warned American citizens at the end of his presidency about the implications of the military-industrial complex and its influence over government. We have now gone well beyond any of the wildest imaginations that could have entered Eisenhower's mind.
John McAfee
#5. The best thing about Eisenhower's Presidency was his Jeffersonian conviction that there should be as little government and as much golf as possible.
Alistair Cooke
#6. Patton would have said a warmer goodbye to his horse, The author writes on Eisenhower's cold dismissal of his wartime lover.
Jean Edward Smith
#7. I once asked General Eisenhower's son, John, if his father ever nourished resentments. "No," he replied, "Dad never wastes a minute thinking about people he doesn't like.
Dale Carnegie
#8. Of the twenty- three men and women who served in Dwight Eisenhower's cabinets, only one, the secretary of agriculture, published a memoir afterward, and it was so discreet as to be soporific.
David Brooks
#9. I never graduated from Iowa, but I was only there for two terms - Truman's and Eisenhower's.
Alex Karras
#10. In the fifties, no one wore beards. In Eisenhower's day, as in the time of the Founding Fathers, all chins were smooth, while during the Civil War, beards were as common as sepsis.
Donald Hall
#11. But Eisenhower's advice was consistent, from his days as a general, to his years in the White House, to his role as veteran counselor: don't fight unless you are in it to win. Don't waste time and lives with half measures.
Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy
#12. Presidents do not go into war lightly. It's a tremendous responsibility in making decisions, and I know Bush must deeply believe this is the only course.
Julie Nixon Eisenhower
#13. If Obama's vision of the public sector is socialism, then so too were the visions of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.
Jeff Greenfield
#14. If it weren't the problem of politics for me, it would be another. And yet, sometimes it's so difficult. And I feel sorry for myself. And then hate myself for this feeling of self-pity.
Julie Nixon Eisenhower
#15. In this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource in peace and war.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#16. One minute I'm exactly what Churchill described me the most powerful man in history. Now the Order's given, hell; I'm just audience front row center to the shoe. But a Corporal on Juno, a Private on Utah there the ones who will affect the outcome not me. It's up to them now.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#17. This operation is not being planned with any alternatives. This operation is planned as a victory, and that's the way it's going to be. We're going down there, and we're throwing everything we have into it, and we're going to make it a success.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#18. In 1953, at the beginning of the Eisenhower era and the glory years of the auto industry, Hudson's had done $153 million in retail sales; in 1981 the downtown Hudson's had done only $44 million - a figure, if adjusted for inflation, about 6 percent of the 1953 total.
David Halberstam
#19. Remember that it is not by a tyrant's words, but only by his deeds that we can know him.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#20. No man can always be right. So the struggle is to do one's best, to keep the brain and conscience clear, never be swayed by unworthy motives or inconsequential reasons, but to strive to unearth the basic factors involved, then do one's duty.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#21. Dwight D. Eisenhower, in my judgment, will go down in history as one of the four 'great' presidents since the U.S. reluctantly became an empire in World War II; Richard Nixon as the nearest to a sociopath by the time he was compelled to resign.
Nigel Hamilton
#22. When contemplating General Eisenhower winning the Presidential election, Truman said, Hell sit here, and hell say, Do this! Do that! And nothing will happen. Poor Ikeit wont be a bit like the Army. Hell find it very frustrating.
Harry S. Truman
#23. War is party-blind. It doesn't care who is in the Oval Office. The forces that drive us to war don't care whether it's Republican, Democrat, or other. The fact is, these parties are prey to special interests. That is something Eisenhower was afraid of.
Eugene Jarecki
#24. There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#25. There used to be this feeling under Eisenhower and Kennedy and Roosevelt and Truman that government was a solution. Trust in the presidency fell precipitously under Johnson - real lows. And it's never come back. It's a trend that, if you're liberal, is really discouraging.
Robert Caro
#26. [Children should contribute] to a family's essential survival and happiness. [In] an urban society, children are ... robbed of the opportunity to do genuinely responsible work.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#27. The essence of nostalgia is an awareness that what has been will never be again.
Milton S. Eisenhower
#28. Once he makes up his mind, he's full of indecision. - On Dwight D. Eisenhower
Oscar Levant
#29. I've always tried to be fair to my subjects. That's easy when they are as likable and admirable as Lewis and Clark, or Eisenhower.
Stephen Ambrose
#30. The Eisenhower Building - the furniture is mismatched; everything is just bad decor and bad quality. Everybody's looking down at their Blackberry. It's a really frantic, mismatched environment. But on the exterior, it's this whitewashed, gorgeous building. It's a fascinating contrast.
Tony Hale
#31. You can decide to invade Russia at dinner, pick Waterloo for battle on a whim. It's the details, the small stuff. Its easy to gamble a million lives. Whats hard is to see how that can hurt one single person. And if you cant keep that straight, hell, you'll lose your humanity.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#32. War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#33. How far have we come in man's long pilgrimage from darkness toward light? Are we nearing the light - a day of freedom and of peace for all mankind? Or are the shadows of another night closing in upon us?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#34. United in this determination and with unshakable faith in the cause for which we fight, we will, with God's help, go forward to our greatest victory.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#35. We view our Nation's strength and security as a trust, upon which rests the hope of free men everywhere.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#36. It's one of the finest highway networks in the world - and nobody seems to care that the basic idea was copied from the Nazis.6 EISENHOWER,
T.R. Reid
#38. It's been a strange day - a day when I thought I was on top of the world, planning my life. I planned all of my courses for the rest of the semester at Smith, and talked to my advisor about honoring in History.
Julie Nixon Eisenhower
#39. 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.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#40. America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#41. The quest for peace is the statesman's most exacting duty ... Practical progress to lasting peace is his fondest hope.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#42. Before a battle, planning is everything. Once the fighting has begun, it's worthless
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#43. To be true to one's own freedom is, in essence, to honor and respect the freedom of all others.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#44. 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.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#45. Whether the Eisenhower administration has underestimated the American people's interest in space exploration or Truman never full appreciated MacArthur, the Soviet Union's Sputnik program has created a public spectacle that even Disney and von Braun might envy.
Ken Hollings
#46. Even in the 1950s, President Eisenhower was concerned about what he called a campaign of hatred of the U.S. in the Arab world, because of the perception on the Arab street that it supported harsh and oppressive regimes to take their oil.
Noam Chomsky
#47. 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.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#48. Eisenhower had about the most expressive face I ever painted, I guess. Just like an actor's. Very mobile. When he talked, he used all the facial muscles. And he had a great, wide mouth that I liked. When he smiled, it was just like the sun came out.
Norman Rockwell
#49. In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#50. In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with the people's money or their economy or their form of government, be conservative.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#51. My dad had the greatest admiration for MacArthur when they were working together in Washington before the Philippines. And Dad used to talk with absolute awe about MacArthur's brain.
John Eisenhower
#52. It is well for us to pause, to acknowledge our debt to those who paid so large a share of freedom's price.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#53. If you want to put golf back on the front pages again, and you don't have a Bobby Jones or a Francis Ouimet handy, here's what you do: You send an aging Jack Nicklaus out in the last round of the Masters and let him kill more foreigners than a general named Eisenhower.
Dan Jenkins
#54. Must, never, must avoid, must guard: the minatory commands came the eleven times (from the departing Eisenhower). In contrast, Kennedy's rhetoric on January 20 with a cascade of permissions: the word "let" rang out 14 times.
Rick Perlstein
#55. I was born in 1953, so that's the Eisenhower administration.
Lincoln Chafee
#57. But all history has taught us the grim lesson that no nation has ever been successful in avoiding the terrors of war by refusing to defend its rights - by attempting to placate aggression.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#59. I do not believe that the children of presidents or vice-presidents should be assigned to combat zones. They have no place there.
John Eisenhower
#60. Help the Cubans to the utmost counseling his successor while handing over the reins. We cannot let Castro's government go on.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#61. In this war, which was total in every sense of the word, we have seen many great changes in military science. It seems to me that not the least of these was the development of psychological warfare as a specific and effective weapon.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#62. In the Eisenhower era, when earnings over $400,000 were subject to 91 percent taxes and the world was a smaller place, you could count the truly wealthy on one hand: Getty, Dupont, Mellon, Rockefeller, though even those fortunes were being dispersed to children as the old robber barons died off.
Michael Shnayerson
#63. Democrats in Congress whipped up fears of Soviet missiles and attacked the Eisenhower administration for allowing the United States to fall behind. The
Eric Schlosser
#64. Never question another man's motive. His wisdom, yes, but not his motives.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#65. 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.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#66. When shallow critics denounce the profit motive inherent in our system of private enterprise, they ignore the fact that it is an economic support of every human right we possess and without it, all rights would disappear.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#67. Throughout the 20th century, the Republican Party benefited from a non-interventionist foreign policy. Think of how Eisenhower came in to stop the Korean War. Think of how Nixon was elected to stop the mess in Vietnam.
Ron Paul
#69. Having established as our goals a lasting world peace with justice and the security of freedom on this earth, we must be prepared to make whatever sacrifices are demanded as we pursue this path to its end.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#70. When you love someone, you care about them. If they have a disaster, you don't abandon them.
Julie Nixon Eisenhower
#71. Before all else, we seek, upon our common labor as a nation, the blessings of Almighty God.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#72. Now this brings me to my main topic - our military strength - more specifically, how to stay strong against threat from outside, without undermining the economic health that supports our security.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#73. The loneliness of command had made Eisenhower emotionally self-sufficient.
Jean Edward Smith
#74. 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.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#75. I guess I was the most unbohemian of all bohemians. My bohemianism consisted of not wanting to get involved with the stupid stuff that I thought people wanted you to get involved with - ... namely America ... Dwight Eisenhower, McCarthyism and all those great things.
Amiri Baraka
#76. 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
#77. When Dwight Eisenhower became president, I personally was delighted. I thought that that was a very good thing.
Malcolm Muggeridge
#78. If Wellington epitomizes the English gentleman, Eisenhower epitomizes the natural American gentleman.
John Keegan
#79. Any survey of the free world's defense structure cannot fail to impart a feeling of regret that so much of our effort and resources must be devoted to armaments.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#80. I tend to pair up Benjamin Harrison and Dwight Eisenhower because they're the two presidents I can think of who most preferred laziness to labor ... There's not much else you can say about Harrison except that he was president of the United States.
Harry S. Truman
#81. In 1962, President Kennedy expanded an earlier trade embargo put in place by a predecessor, President Eisenhower, to a total economic blockade, which pushed the Cubans further in Moscow's direction.
Tariq Ali
#82. 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
#83. You do not lead by hitting people over the head
that's assault, not leadership.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#84. 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.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#85. I'll tell you what leadership is. It's persuasion and conciliation, and education, and patience.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#86. Well, it's hard for a mere man to believe that woman doesn't have equal rights.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#87. If Berlin fell, the US would lose Europe, and if Europe fell into the hands of the Soviet Union and thus added its great industrial plant to the USSR's already great industrial plant, the United States would be reduced to the character of a garrison state if it were to survive at all.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#88. The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it's usually lousy.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#89. Let's never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt
ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let's do as General Eisenhower does: let's never
waste a minute thinking about people we don't like.
Dale Carnegie
#90. Winning isn't everything," Eisenhower said faintly. "Sometimes, just knowing your family's safe and healthy and alive is even better.
Margaret Peterson Haddix
#91. At the hangars, each jumpmaster was given two packs of papers, containing an order of the day from Eisenhower and a message from Colonel Sink, to pass around to the men. "Tonight is the night of nights," said Sink's. "May God be with
Stephen E. Ambrose
#92. First of all, we were never not speaking. It's gotten so blown out of proportion. It was a very straightforward difference of opinion. I think because we were so private and refused to talk about it, these stories just got out of control.
Julie Nixon Eisenhower
#93. Modern man worships at the temple of science, but science tells him only what is possible, not what is right.
Milton S. Eisenhower
#94. I think I can do more inside the Republican Party to keep it in the center of the road. That's where Eisenhower was. And I'm an unabashed Eisenhower Republican.
Charles H. Percy
#95. I know that our country is strongest when we lead the world, when we lead strong alliances. And that's the way Eisenhower and Reagan and Kennedy and others did it.
John F. Kerry
#96. Once Dwight Eisenhower makes up his mind, he's full of indecision.
Oscar Levant
#97. Knowledge-full, unfettered knowledge of its own heritage, of freedom's enemies, of the whole world of men and ideas-this knowledge is a free people's surest strength.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#98. If a man's associates find him guilty of being phony, if they find that he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teachings and actions must square with each other. The first great need, therefore, is integrity and high purpose.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#99. We have heard much of the phrase, peace and friendship. This phrase, in expressing the aspiration of America, is not complete. We should say instead, peace and friendship, in freedom. This, I think, is America's real message to the rest of the world.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#100. Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the most basic, expression of Americanism. Thus, the founding fathers of America saw it, and thus with God's help, it will continue to be.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
