Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Dwight D. Eisenhower US President

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: United States
  • Born: Oct 14, 1890
  • Died: Mar 28, 1969

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe; he had responsibility for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942 - 43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944 - 45 from the Western Front. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO. He was the last U.S. President to have been born in the 19th century.

Eisenhower was of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry and was raised in a large family in Kansas by parents with a strong religious background. He attended and graduated from West Point and later married and had two sons. After World War II, Eisenhower served as Army Chief of Staff under President Harry S. Truman then assumed the post of President at Columbia University.

Eisenhower entered the 1952 presidential race as a Republican to counter the non-interventionism of Senator Robert A. Taft and to crusade against "Communism, Korea and corruption".

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

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.

There are a number of things wrong with Washington. One of them is that everyone is too far from home.

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.

There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.

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.

War settles nothing.

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.

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

The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.

Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.

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

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.

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.

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it's usually lousy.

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

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

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

There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.