Dwight 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.

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.

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

A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

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.

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.

Things are more like they are today than they have ever been before.

When you appeal to force, there's one thing you must never do - lose.

When you are in any contest you should work as if there were, to the very last minute, a chance to lose it.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

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.

Do not needlessly endanger your lives until I give you the signal.

Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

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

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.

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.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem-and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the Presidency.

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.

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.

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

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.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionable 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.

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

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

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be temped to risk his own destruction.

I deplore the need or the use of troops anywhere to get American citizens to obey the orders of constituted courts.

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.

Speeches are for the younger men who are going places. And I'm not going anyplace except six feet under the floor of that little chapel adjoining the museum and library at Abilene.

The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.

Without a doubt, psychological warfare has proven its right to a place of dignity in our military arsenal.

Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.

In the counsels 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.

Only Americans can hurt America.

There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

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

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 their way and let them have it.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

The world moves, and ideas that were good once are not always good.

There is -- in world affairs -- a steady course to be followed between an assertion of strength that is truculent and a confession of helplessness that is cowardly.

The only way to win World War III is to prevent it.

Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master.

The president cannot escape from his office.

There is one thing about being President, no one can tell you when to sit down.