Dwight D. Eisenhower

President

1890-10-14

Quotes by Dwight D. Eisenhower

• 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. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

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• 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.

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• One day the people of the world will want peaceso much that the governments will have to get outof their way and give it to them.

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• shot through the heart, and you're to blame! you give love, a bad name.

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• Always try to associate yourself with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you do, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you.

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• You do not lead by hitting people over the head -- that's assault, not leadership.

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• Should any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

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• Extremes to the right and to the left of any political dispute are always wrong.

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• The history of free men is never written by chance but by choice - their choice.

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• This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial 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. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

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• Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.

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• Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in blood of his followers and sacrifices of his friends.

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• 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. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

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• Never send a battalion to take a hill if a regiment is available.

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

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• 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?

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• Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book...

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• Never waste a minute thinking about people you don't like.

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

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• Never question another man's motive. His wisdom, yes, but not his motives.

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