Dwight D. Eisenhower/Quotes: Difference between revisions

{{Useful Notes}}

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*We were depending on considerable assistance from the insurrectionists in France. Throughout France the Free French had been of inestimable value in the campaign. ... Without their great assistance the liberation of France and the defeat of the enemy in Western Europe would have consumed a much longer time and meant greater losses to ourselves.

**As quoted in [http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/06/opinions/kaiser-ve-day-french-resistance/index.html "What Americans forget about French resistance"] (7 May 2015), by Charles Kaiser, ''Cable News Network'', Atlanta, Georgia.

 

* Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. '''My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available.''' The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. '''If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.'''

 

* '''Kinship among nations is not determined in such measurements as proximity of size and age.''' Rather we should turn to those inner things — call them what you will — I mean those intangibles that are the real treasures free men possess. To preserve his freedom of worship, his equality before law, his liberty to speak and act as he sees fit, subject only to provisions that he trespass not upon similar rights of others — a Londoner will fight. So will a citizen of Abilene. When we consider these things, then the valley of the Thames draws closer to the farms of Kansas and the plains of Texas.

 

*The freedom of the individual and his willingness to follow real leadership are at the core of [[America]]’s strength.

 

* Democracy is essentially a political system that recognizes the equality of humans before the law.

 

* '''War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.''' Though you follow the trade of the warrior, you do so in the spirit of [[George Washington|Washington]] — not of Genghis Khan. For Americans, only threat to our way of life justifies resort to conflict.

 

*The proudest human that walks the earth is a free American citizen.

 

*To blend, without coercion, the individual good and the common good is the essence of citizenship in a free country.

 

* The free individual has been justified as his own master; the state as his servant.

 

===1950s===

 

* '''Censorship, in my opinion, is a stupid and shallow way of approaching the solution to any problem.''' Though sometimes necessary, as witness a professional and technical secret that may have a bearing upon the welfare and very safety of this country, we should be very careful in the way we apply it, because in censorship always lurks the very great danger of working to the disadvantage of the American nation.

 

* '''The hand of the aggressor is stayed by strength — and strength alone.'''

 

*The true purpose of education is to prepare young men and women for effective citizenship in a free form of government.

 

*'''May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.'''

 

*Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.

 

* From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city, every village, and every rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.

 

* 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.

 

* '''You have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the ''falling domino'' principle'''. You have a row of dominoes set up. You knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have the beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.

 

* '''The general limits of your freedom are merely these: that you do not trespass upon the equal rights of others.'''

 

* Once he called upon General McClellan, and the President went over to the General's house — a process which I as­sure you has been reversed long since — and General McClellan decided he did not want to see the President, and went to bed.<br>Lincoln's friends criticized him severely for allowing a mere General to treat him that way. And he said, "All I want out of General McClellan is a victory, and if to hold his horse will bring it, I will gladly hold his horse."

 

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

 

* We have erased segregation in those areas of national life to which Federal authority clearly extends. So doing in this, my friends, we have neither sought nor claimed partisan credit, and all such actions are nothing more -- nothing less than the rendering of justice. And we have always been aware of this great truth: '''the final battle against intolerance is to be fought -- not in the chambers of any legislature -- but in the hearts of men.'''

 

* But I believe this: by and large, the United States ought to be able to choose for its President anybody that it wants, regardless of the number of terms he has served. That is what I believe. Now, some people have said "You let him get enough power and this will lead toward a one-party government." That, I don't believe. I have got the utmost faith in the long-term common sense of the American people. Therefore, I don't think there should be any inhibitions other than those that were in the 35-year age limit and so on. I think that was enough, myself.

 

*It is unwise to make education too cheap. If everything is provided freely, there is a tendency to put no value on anything. Education must always have a certain price on it; even as the very process of learning itself must always require individual effort and initiative.

 

* '''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.'''

 

*I do not believe that all of these problems can be solved just by a new law, or something that someone says, with teeth in it. For example, when we got into the Little Rock thing, it was not my province to talk about segregation or desegregation. I had the job of supporting a federal court that had issued a proper order under the Constitution, and where compliance was prevented by action that was unlawful.

 

*If civilization is to survive, it must choose the rule of law.

 

*We believe in the principle that governments are properly established only when it is with the consent of the governed.

 

* '''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.

 

* '''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.'''

 

* Oh, goddammit, we forgot the silent prayer.

 

*'''I believe that the United States as a government, if it is going to be true to its own founding documents, does have the job of working toward that time when there is no discrimination made on such inconsequential reason as race, color, or religion.'''

 

====First Inaugural Address (1953)====

====Annual Message to Congress (1953)====

* I propose to use whatever authority exists in the office of the President to end segregation in the District of Columbia, including the Federal Government, and any segregation in the Armed Forces.

 

====The Chance for Peace (1953)====

 

====Remarks at the United Negro College Fund luncheon (1953)====

 

*'''I believe the only way to protect my own rights is to protect the rights of others.'''

* '''I believe as long as we allow conditions to exist that make for second-class citizens, we are making of ourselves less than first-class citizens.'''

====Speech to the B'nai B'rith (1953)====

*Let us never forget that the deep things that are American are the soul and the spirit. The Statue of Liberty is not tired, and not because it is made of bronze. It is because no matter what happens, here the individual is dignified because he is created in the image of his God. Let us not forget it.

 

 

====Address at the Philadelphia Convention Hall (1956)====

*Our time of national political debate is almost ended. The clamor of these days will soon subside. And your day of thoughtful decision swiftly nears.

 

* '''We look upon this shaken Earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose — the building of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails. 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. We know clearly what we seek, and why. We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. And now, as in no other age, we seek it because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself. Yet this peace we seek cannot be born of fear alone: it must be rooted in the lives of nations. '''There must be justice, sensed and shared by all peoples, for, without justice the world can know only a tense and unstable truce. There must be law, steadily invoked and respected by all nations, for without law, the world promises only such meager justice as the pity of the strong upon the weak. But the law of which we speak, comprehending the values of freedom, affirms the equality of all nations, great and small. Splendid as can be the blessings of such a peace, high will be its cost: in toil patiently sustained, in help honorably given, in sacrifice calmly borne.'''

====Address to the American People on the Situation in Little Rock (1957)====

*A foundation of our American way of life is our national respect for law.

*It was my hope that this localized situation would be brought under control by city and State authorities. If the use of local police powers had been sufficient, our traditional method of leaving the problems in those hands would have been pursued. '''But when large gatherings of obstructionists made it impossible for the decrees of the Court to be carried out, both the law and the national interest demanded that the President take action.'''

 

====Remarks on the Observation of Law Day (1958)====

 

*Freedom under law is like the air we breathe.

 

*The Founders conceived government as the servant, not the master of the individual.

 

* Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on [[Japan]]. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in [[New Mexico]], and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. <br>During his 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 secondly 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'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude...

 

*The government in Washington belongs to you.

 

* '''One circumstance that helped our character development: we were needed.''' I often think today of what an impact could be made if children believed they were contributing to a family's essential survival and happiness. '''In the transformation from a rural to an urban society, children are — though they might not agree — robbed of the opportunity to do genuinely responsible work.'''

 

*Eisenhower used to tell me that this place was a prison. I never felt freer.

 

* '''Eisenhower was known as a harmonizer, a man who could get diverse factions to work toward a common goal... Leadership, he explained, meant patience and conciliation, not "hitting people over the head." '''

** Andreas Wenger, in ''Living with Peril : Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Nuclear Weapons'' (1997), Ch. 1, p. 14