Dwight D. Eisenhower

Born
October 14, 1890, Denison, Texas, U.S.

Died
March 28, 1969.

Occupation
President, politician, general.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was an American politician and general who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe.

You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

This desk of mine is one at which a man may die, but from which he cannot resign.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

I shall make that trip. I shall go to Korea.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

Only Americans can hurt America.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

In the final choice a soldier’s pack is not so heavy as a prisoner’s chains.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
– 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

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

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

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.
– 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

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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

‘Worry’ is a word that I don’t allow myself to use.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

When you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions that you accept.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

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

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

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

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

I’m saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

Pessimism never won any battle.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.
– 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

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

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.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

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.
– 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

Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

Our pleasures were simple – they included survival.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is no victory at bargain basement prices.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

The sergeant is the Army.
– 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

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
– 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

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower