Dwight D. Eisenhower Quotes

There is no victory at bargain basement prices.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

We merely want to live in peace with all the world.

Only by trusting in God can a man carrying responsibility find repose.

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

And they can appreciate, through personal experience, that the really decisive battleground of American freedom is in the hearts and minds of our own people... Each day we must ask that Almighty God will set and keep His protecting hand over us so that we may pass on to those who come after us the heritage of a free people, secure in their God-given rights and in full control of a Government dedicated to the preservation of those rights.

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.

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.

In order to insure proper and widespread observance of this anniversary, all veterans, all veterans' organizations, and the entire citizenry will wish to join hands in the common purpose.

There are no victories at discount prices.

Well, a funny thing, there are three that I like all for the same reason, golf, fishing, and shooting, and I do because first, they take you into the fields. There is mild exercise, the kind that an older individual probably should have. And on top of it, it induces you to take at any one time 2 or 3 hours, if you can, where you are thinking of the bird or that ball or the wily trout. Now, to my mind it is a very healthful, beneficial kind of thing, and I do it whenever I get a chance, as you well know.

Our arms must be mighty ... ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction

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.

The one weapon every man, soldier, sailor, or airman should be able to use effectively is the rifle.

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

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.

We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

American working men are principals in the three-member team of capital, management, labor. Never have they regarded themselves as a servile class that could attain freedom only through destruction of the industrial economy.

Now all of us deplore this vast military spending. Yet, in the face of the Soviet attitude, we realize its necessity. Whatever the cost, America will keep itself secure. But in the process we must not, by our own hand, destroy or distort the American system. This we could do by useless overspending. I know one sure way to overspend. That is by overindulging sentimental attachments to outmoded military machines and concepts.

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.

War is a grim, cruel business, a business justified only as a means of sustaining the forces of good against those of evil.

I’m going to pass a law that no one can ask me my golf score.

Every gathering of Americans-whether a few on the porch of a crossroads store or massed thousands in a great stadium-is the possessor of a potentially immeasurable influence on the future.

In this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource in peace and war.

First, separate ground, sea and air warfare is gone forever. If ever again we should be involved in war, we will fight it in all elements, with all services, as one single concentrated effort.

The proper role of government, however, is that of partner with the farmer -- never his master. By every possible means we must develop and promote that partnership -- to the end that agriculture may continue to be a sound, enduring foundation for our economy and that farm living may be a profitable and satisfying experience.

Always try to associate yourself closely with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you. Apart from the rewards of friendship, the association might pay off at some unforeseen time - that is only an accidental byproduct. The important thing is that the learning will make you a better person.

The opportunist thinks of me and today. The statesman thinks of us and tomorrow.

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

Our forms of government - though both cast in the democratic pattern - are greatly different. Indeed, sometimes it appears that many of our misunderstandings spring from an imperfect knowledge on the part of both of us of the dissimilarities in our forms of government.

The peace we seek, founded upon decent trust and cooperation among nations, can be fortified not by weapons of war but by wheat and cotton, by milk and wool, by meat and timber, and by rice. These are words that translate into every language.

No one should be appointed to political office if he is a seeker after it.

So long as we govern our nation by the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights, we can be sure that our nation will grow in strength and wisdom and freedom.

No treaty or international agreement can contravene the Constitution.

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.

As quickly as you start spending federal money in large amounts, it looks like free money.

The Founding Father expressed in words for all to read the ideal of Government based upon the dignity of the individual. That ideal previously had existed only in the hearts and minds of men. They produced the timeless documents upon which the Nation is rounded and has grown great. They, recognizing God as the author of individual fights, declared that the purpose of Government is to secure those rights.

War is a contest, and you finally get to a point where you are talking merely about race suicide, and nothing else.

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

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.

Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master.

I would rather have a lucky general than a smart general.... They win battles, and they make me lucky.

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

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

Because, therefore, we are defending a way of life, we must be respectful of that way of life as we proceed to the solution of our problem. We must not violate its principles and its precepts, and we must not destroy from within what we are trying to defend from without.

I know only one method of operation: to be as honest with others as I am with myself.

The next time you see one of those squirrels go near my putting green, take a gun and shoot it