Quotes from Dwight D. Eisenhower

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.

It seemed to me that constant stressing of the individual rights and privileges of American citizenship had overshadowed the equally important truth that such individualism can be sustained only so long as the citizen accepts his full responsibility for the welfare of the nation that protects him in the exercise of these rights.

Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.

They may excuse failure but they will not excuse abandonment.

Ideologen sind Leute, die glauben, dass die Menschheit besser sei als der Mensch.

So the world is again faced with the problem of armed aggression. Powerful dictatorships are attacking an exposed, but free, area. What should we do? Shall we take the position that, submitting to threat, it is better to surrender pieces of free territory in the hope that this will satisfy the appetite of the aggressor and we shall have peace?

shot through the heart, and you're to blame! you give love, a bad name.

No battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever won without one.. Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

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

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.

Moreover, Middle East oil was a great prize.

My own recommendation, then as always, was that no operations should be undertaken in the Mediterranean except as a directly supporting move for the Channel attack and that our planned redeployment to England should proceed with all possible speed. Obviously a sufficient strength had to be kept in the Mediterranean to hold what we had already gained and to force the Nazis to maintain sizable forces in that area.

There was only one justification for the use of troops; to uphold the law. Though Faubus denied it, I, as President of the United States, now had that justification and the clear obligation to act ... the 101st Airborne Division, from nearby Fort Campbell, Kentucky, arrived in Little Rock; another five hundred moved in later the same day.

The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.

I have always found plans usless, but planning indispensible

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

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

Our pleasures were simple - they included survival.

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

Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.

It is far more important to be able to hit the target than it is to haggle over who makes a weapon or who pulls a trigger.

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.

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 have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn't know it then.