Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

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

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

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old and that I know.

Disarmament with mutual honor and confidence is a continuing imperative.

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.

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.

The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it it's usually lousy.

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

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

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

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

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

Only Americans can hurt America.

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.

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

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.

There is no victory at bargain basement prices.

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

Though force can protect in emergency only justice fairness consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.

Politics is a profession, a serious complicated and in its true sense a noble one.

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.

I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.

Pessimism never won any battle.

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

Our real problem then is not our strength today, it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.

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

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

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

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.

The sergeant is the Army.

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.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

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.

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.

There is nothing wrong with America that faith love of freedom intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure.

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

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

There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

If a problem cannot be solved enlarge it.

Pull the string and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it and it will go nowhere at all.

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.

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

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.

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.

Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.

There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

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

Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.

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.

Oh that lovely title ex-president.

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.

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

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.

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.

Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

War settles nothing.

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.

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

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

When you put on a uniform there are certain inhibitions that you accept.

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.

Unlike presidential administrations problems rarely have terminal dates.

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

The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.

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

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.

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?

Plans are nothing, planning is everything.

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.

If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order.

The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.