The Best Dwight Eisenhower quotes

No battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever won without one. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Pessimism never won any battle. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I would rather have a lucky general than a smart general…. They win battles, and they make me lucky. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

Every battle is going to surprise you. No plan ever survives contact with the enemy. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Before a battle, planning is everything. Once the fighting has begun, it’s worthless — Dwight D. Eisenhower

You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Preparing for battle, plans were essential. But once the battle was joined, plans were useless. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I never saw a pessimistic general win a battle. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Without God, there would be no American form of Government, nor an American way of life. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Only Americans can hurt America. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

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. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

In opposing Communism, we are defeating ourselves if we use methods that do not conform to the American sense of justice. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

That was not the biggest battle that ever was, but for me it always typified one thing; the dash, the ingenuity, the readiness at the first opportunity that characterizes the American soldier. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The speed, accuracy and devastating power of American Artillery won confidence and admiration from the troops it supported and inspired fear and respect in their enemy. — 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

They [the founders] proclaimed to all the world the revolutionary doctrine of the divine rights of the common man. That doctrine has ever since been the heart of the American faith. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Peace and friendship, in freedom.’ — Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

The only answer to a regime that wages total cold war is to wage total peace. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of the way and let them have it. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The gravity of the time is such that every new avenue of peace, no matter how dimly discernible, should be explored. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

There can be no peace without law. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

For all that we cherish and justly desire–for ourselves or for our children–the securing of peace is the first requisite. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The quest for peace is the statesman’s most exacting duty… Practical progress to lasting peace is his fondest hope. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

There can be no true disarmament without peace, and there can be no real peace without very material disarmament. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Through unity of action we can be a veritable colossus in support of peace. No one can defeat us unless we first defeat ourselves. Every one of us must be guided by this truth. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

People in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than governments. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

One of these days, the people are going to demand peace of the government, and the government is going to have to give it to them. — Dwight Eisenhower

It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The building of such a peace is a bold and solemn purpose. To proclaim it is easy. To serve it will be hard. And to attain it, we must be aware of its full meaning–and ready to pay its full price. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Peace is more the product of our day–to–day living than of a spectacular program, intermittently executed. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The world is more like it is now then it ever has before. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The eyes of the world are upon you. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The world must know what happened, and never forget. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

Since the advent of nuclear weapons, it seems clear that there is no longer any alternative to peace, if there is to be a happy and well world. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The only way to win World War III is to prevent it. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty–loving people everywhere march with you. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

There must be justice, sensed and shared by all peoples, for, without justice the world can know only a tense and unstable truce. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Fortunately for us and our world, young people are not easily discouraged. The hopes of the world rest on the fresh outlook of young people — 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

The day will come when the people will make so insistent their demand that there be peace in the world that the Governments will get out of the way and let them have peace. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

We have won an armistice on a single battlefield, not peace in our world. We may not now relax our guard nor cease our quest. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Civilization owes to the Islamic world some of its most important tools and achievements…the Muslim genius has added much to the culture of all peoples. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The world could be fixed of its problems if every child understood the necessity of their existence. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

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. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The peace we seek and need means much more than mere absence of war. It means the acceptance of law, and the fostering of justice, in all the world. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The world must learn to work together, or finally it will not work at all. — 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

The supreme quality of leadership is integrity. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Leadership is the ability to get a person to do what you want him to do, when you want it done, in a way you want it done, because he wants to do it. — 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

Leadership is the ability to decide what is to be done and then get others to do it. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I’ll tell you what leadership is. It’s persuasion and conciliation, and education, and patience. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Character in many ways is everything in leadership. It is made up of many things, but I would say character is really integrity. — 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

We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

There are three stages of life: youth, maturity, and ‘My, you’re looking good!’ — Dwight D. Eisenhower

We cannot risk living all our lives under emergency measures. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Do not needlessly endanger your lives until I give you the signal. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

And now, as in no other age, we seek it [peace] because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Science seems ready to confer upon us, as its final gift, the power to erase human life from this planet. — 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

Peace signifies more than the stilling of guns, easing the sorrow of war. More than escape from death, it is a way of life. More than a haven for the weary, it is a hope for the brave. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

As nuclear and other technological achievements continue to mount, the normal life span will continue to climb. The hourly productivity of the worker will increase. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

We do not keep security establishments merely to defend property or territory or rights abroad or at sea. We keep the security forces to defend a way of life. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

We must achieve both security and solvency. In fact, the foundation of military strength is economic strength, — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The hand of the aggressor is stayed by strength–and strength alone. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

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. — 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

As our heart summons our strength, our wisdom must direct it. — 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

Despite the present, temporary interests that Israel has in common with France and Britain, you ought not to forget that the strength of Israel and her future are bound up with the United States. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

We are ready in short, to dedicate our strength to serving the needs, rather than the fears, of the world. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Against the dark background of the atomic bomb, the United States does not wish merely to present strength, but also the desire and the hope for peace. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I believe that without free enterprise there can be no democracy. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

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

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

The history of free men is never written by chance but by choice–their choice. — 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

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

You realise Group Captain that this might be the most important weather forecast in history? — Dwight D. Eisenhower

History teaches that, when powerful despots can gain something through aggression, they try, by the same methods, to gain more and more and more. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The stop–watch of history is running. The race is on . . . — Dwight D. Eisenhower