Dwight D. Eisenhower Quotes Proverbs, and Aphorisms

• October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969
• American
• The 34th President of the United States, General, Military Leader

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States (1953–1961) and a five-star general who served as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, overseeing the successful D-Day invasion. As president, he promoted moderate conservatism, expanded Social Security, created the Interstate Highway System, and maintained a strong stance against Soviet expansion during the Cold War. Eisenhower warned against the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell address, highlighting concerns about unchecked defense spending. Though sometimes criticized for a cautious approach to civil rights, his steady leadership during a tense global era earned him widespread respect. He remains a symbol of pragmatic governance, strategic foresight, and wartime leadership.

1. “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”
2. “Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.”
3. “The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.”
4. “Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.”
5. “If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.”
6. “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.”
7. “Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.”
8. “War settles nothing.”
9. “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.”
10. “May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.”
11. “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
12. “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.”
13. “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.”
14. “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.”
15. “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.”
16. “The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past.”
17. “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?”
18. “The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good.”
19. “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
20. “The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!”
21. “No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know.”
22. “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.”
23. “If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom.”
24. “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.”
25. “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.”
26. “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.”
27. “There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.”
28. “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.”
29. “Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.”
30. “Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.”
31. “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.”
32. “I shall make that trip. I shall go to Korea.”
33. “I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem — and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?”
34. “Pessimism never won any battle.”
35. “How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?”
36. “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.”
37. “There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.”
38. “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.”
39. “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.”
40. “Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.”
41. “You don’t lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership.”
42. “There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.”
43. “Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”
44. “Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.”
45. “Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.”
46. “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.”
47. “Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.”
48. “Ankles are nearly always neat and good-looking, but knees are nearly always not.”
49. “Don’t join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.”
50. “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.”
51. “We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.”
52. “The sergeant is the Army.”
53. “The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.”
54. “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.”
55. “In the final choice a soldier’s pack is not so heavy as a prisoner’s chains.”
56. “When you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions that you accept.”
57. “Only Americans can hurt America.”
58. “The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it’s usually lousy.”
59. “I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.”
60. “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.”
61. “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
62. “Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.”
63. “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
64. “We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.”
65. “There is no victory at bargain basement prices.”
66. “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.”
67. “I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem — and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?”
68. “Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.”
69. “Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.”
70. “Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.”
71. “‘Worry’ is a word that I don’t allow myself to use.”
72. “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”
73. “There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.”
74. “There are a number of things wrong with Washington. One of them is that everyone is too far from home.”
75. “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.”
76. “Well, when you come down to it, I don’t see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?”
77. “Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.”
78. “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.”
79. “We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.”
80. “An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame – Southern Methodist University game and doesn’t care who wins.”
81. “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.”
82. “We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.”
83. “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.”
84. “The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.”
85. “Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.”
86. “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”
87. “The purpose is clear. It is safety with solvency. The country is entitled to both.”
88. “Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.”
89. “I deplore the need or the use of troops anywhere to get American citizens to obey the orders of constituted courts.”
90. “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.”
91. “This desk of mine is one at which a man may die, but from which he cannot resign.”
92. “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.”
93. “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.”
94. “Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.”
95. “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.”
96. “I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the presidency.”
97. “Our pleasures were simple — they included survival.”
98. “Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.”
99. “I’m saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am.”
100. “An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.”
101. “History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.”