Dwight D. Eisenhower Military Quotations

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.

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

The sergeant is the Army.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

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.

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

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.

Military power serves the cause of security by making prohibitive the cost of any aggressive attack. It serves the cause of peace by holding up a shield behind which the patient constructive work of peace can go on.

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

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

Some day there is going to be a man sitting in my present chair who has not been raised in the military services and who will have little understanding of where slashes in their estimates can be made with little or no damage. If that should happen while we still have the state of tension that now exists in the world, I shudder to think of what could happen in this country

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

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

There is no victory at bargain basement prices.

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

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

Now this brings me to my main topic - our military strength - more specifically, how to stay strong against threat from outside, without undermining the economic health that supports our security.

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.

America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

When you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions that you accept.

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.

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.

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

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.

Now all of us deplore this vast military spending. Yet, in the face of the Soviet attitude, we realize its necessity. Whatever the cost, America will keep itself secure. But in the process we must not, by our own hand, destroy or distort the American system. This we could do by useless overspending. I know one sure way to overspend. That is by overindulging sentimental attachments to outmoded military machines and concepts.

I believe we must be strong militarily, but beyond a certain point military strength can become a national weakness.

In the councils 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. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

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

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.

It is not a struggle merely of economic theories, or forms of government or of military power. At issue is the true nature of man. Either man is the creature whom the psalmist described as a little lower than the angels ... or man is a soulless, animated machine to be enslaved, used and consumed by the state for its own glorification. It is, therefore, a struggle which goes to the roots of the human spirit, and its shadow falls across the long sweep of man's destiny.

If I didn't have air supremacy, I wouldn't be here.

The necessary and wise subordination of the military to civil power must be sustained.

[on the atomic bomb] 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.

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.

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.

I have spent my life in the study of military strength as a deterrent to war, and in the character of military armaments necessary to win a war. The study of the first of these questions is still profitable, but we are rapidly getting to the point that no war can be won.

Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

Beware the influence of the military-industrial complex.

Beware the military-industrial complex.

In this war, which was total in every sense of the word, we have seen many great changes in military science. It seems to me that not the least of these was the development of psychological warfare as a specific and effective weapon.

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

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

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.