Eisenhower Quotes

Against War

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

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, and the hopes of its children.

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

War settles nothing.

Preventive war was an invention of Hitler.

For Peace

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

This world of ours...must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

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.

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

America

Only Americans can hurt America.

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

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.

We stand ready to engage with any and all others in joint effort to remove the causes of mutual fear and distrust among nations, so as to make possible drastic reduction in armaments.

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. 

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.  Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. 

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.

Dollars and guns are no substitutes for brains and will power.

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.