|
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 – 1969)
- 34th President of the United States
Sourced
- You will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeat in open battle man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory. Good luck, and let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
- The D-Day Order, 6 June 1944
- I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.
- Speech in Ottawa, Canada ( January, 10 1946)
- A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
- Inaugural address (January 20, 1953)
- All of us have heard this term 'preventative war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time... I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.
- Variant: A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility. I don't believe there is such a thing, and frankly I wouldn?'t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.
- Press conference 1953
- 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. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. [...] Is there no other way the world may live?
- 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.
- During [Stimson 's] recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and second because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face.' [Stimson] was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick conclusions.
- The White House Years: Mandate for Change: 1953–1956: A Personal Account (1963) p312-313
- ...if a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.
- Remarks at Fourth Annual Republican Women's National Conference, March 6, 1956.
- I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of 'emergency' is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.
- Source: A speech to the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference in Washington, DC on Nov. 14, 1957.
- This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience…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.
- Farewell speech as President (January 17, 1961)
Attributed
- An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
- Being shot at focuses the mind wonderfully.
- Do not needlessly endanger your lives until I give you the signal.
- History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or timid.
- Humility must always be the portion of any man who recieves acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrafices of his friends.
- 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.
- 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.
- Variant: If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. (1949)
- Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
- May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
- Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.
- The sergeant is the army.
- There is no victory at bargain basement prices.
- Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
- This is something, eh, that is the kind of thing that must be gone through with what I believe is best not talked about too much until we know whatever answers there will be.
- Responding to questions about the investigation of J. Robert Oppenheimer's supposed Communist sympathies
External links
|
|
