Dwight D. Eisenhower
I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem - and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?
We the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serveCollection: People
Never let yourself be persuaded that any one Great Man, any one leader, is necessary to the salvation of America. When America consists of one leader and 158 million followers, it will no longer be America.Collection: Men
If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.Collection: Determination
Teachers need our active support and encouragement. They are doing one of the most necessary and exacting jobs in the land. They are developing our most precious national resource: our children, our future citizens.Collection: Teacher
Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.Collection: Responsibility
For every obstacle there is a solution. Persistence is the key. The greatest mistake is giving up!Collection: Inspiring
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.Collection: Peace
The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.Collection: Leadership
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.Collection: Military
The only way to win World War III is to prevent it.Collection: War
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 countryCollection: Country
The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.Collection: Gutters
Beware the military-industrial complex.Collection: Military
The qualities of a great man are vision, integrity, courage, understanding, the power of articulation, and profundity of character.Collection: Integrity
A good teacher is one who can understand those who are not very good at explaining, and explain to those who are not very good at understanding.Collection: Teacher
Never waste a minute thinking about people you don't like.Collection: Inspirational
Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the most basic, expression of Americanism. Thus, the founding fathers of America saw it, and thus with God's help, it will continue to be.Collection: Bible
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.Collection: Stupid
And I should like to assure you, my Islamic friends, that under the American Constitution, under American tradition, and in American hearts, this Center, this place of worship, is just as welcome as could be a similar edifice of any other religion. Indeed, America would fight with her whole strength for your right to have here your own church and worship according to your own conscience. This concept is indeed a part of America, and without that concept we would be something else than what we are.Collection: Islamic
There is a kind of dictatorship that can come about through a creeping paralysis of thought, readiness to accept paternalistic measures by government, and along with those measures comes a surrender of our own responsibilities and therefore a surrender of our own thought over our own lives and our own right to exercise the vote. The free system gives the right to every citizen to do something for himself. Because he has the right, the opportunity is always there.Collection: Life
Laughter can relieve tension, soothe the pain of disappointment, and strengthen the spirit for the formidable tasks that always lie ahead.Collection: Happiness
Freedom bestows on us the priceless gift of opportunity - if we neglect our opportunities we shall certainly lose our freedom.Collection: Opportunity
In this hope, among the things we teach to the young are such truths as the transcendent value of the individual and the dignity of all people, the futility and stupidity of war, its destructiveness of life and its degradation of human values.Collection: War
Never be more scared of the enemy than you think he is of you.Collection: Thinking
Possibly my hatred of war blinds me so that I cannot comprehend the arguments they adduce. But, in my opinion, there is no such thing as a preventive war. Although this suggestion is repeatedly made, none has yet explained how war prevents war. Worse than this, no one has been able to explain away the fact that war creates the conditions that beget war.Collection: War
This is a long tough road we have to travel. The men that can do things are going to be sought out just as surely as the sun rises in the morning. Fake reputations, habits of glib and clever speech, and glittering surface performance are going to be discovered.Collection: Morning
There is no such thing as human superiority.Collection: Humans
No man is worth your tears, but once you find one that is, he won't make you cry.Collection: Love
It is probably a pity that every citizen of each state cannot visit all the others, to see the differences, to learn what we have in common, and come back with a richer, fuller understanding of America - in all its beauty, in all its dignity, in all its strength, in support of moral principles.Collection: Travel
Knowledge-full, unfettered knowledge of its own heritage, of freedom's enemies, of the whole world of men and ideas-this knowledge is a free people's surest strength.Collection: Knowledge
The things I saw beggar description ... The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty, and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where there were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to "propaganda".Collection: Men
In the highest sense the Bible is to us the unique repository of eternal spiritual truths.Collection: Spiritual
When we get to the point, as we one day will, that both sides know that in any outbreak of general hostilities, regardless of the element of surprise, destruction will be both reciprocal and complete, possibly we will have sense enough to meet at the conference table with the understanding that the era of armaments has ended and the human race must conform its actions to this truth or die.Collection: War
Kinship among nations is not determined in such measurements as proximity of size and age. Rather we should turn to those inner things - call them what you will - I mean those intangibles that are the real treasures free men possess. To preserve his freedom of worship, his equality before law, his liberty to speak and act as he sees fit, subject only to provisions that he trespass not upon similar rights of others - a Londoner will fight. So will a citizen of Abilene. When we consider these things, then the valley of the Thames draws closer to the farms of Kansas and the plains of Texas.Collection: Real
I do not believe that any political campaign justifies the declaration of a moratorium on ordinary common sense.Collection: Believe
The Founding Father expressed in words for all to read the ideal of Government based upon the dignity of the individual. That ideal previously had existed only in the hearts and minds of men. They produced the timeless documents upon which the Nation is rounded and has grown great. They, recognizing God as the author of individual fights, declared that the purpose of Government is to secure those rights.Collection: Father
Since the advent of nuclear weapons, it seems clear that there is no longer any alternative to peace, if there is to be a happy and well world.Collection: Peace
God, I hate the Germans.Collection: Hate
The true slogan of a true democracy is not `Let the Government do it' but rather, 'let's do it ourselves'.... This is the spirit of a people dedicated to helping themselves and one another.Collection: Government
The seeker is never so popular as the sought. People want what they can't get.Collection: People
Any survey of the free world's defense structure cannot fail to impart a feeling of regret that so much of our effort and resources must be devoted to armaments.Collection: Regret
The only answer to a regime that wages total cold war is to wage total peace.Collection: Peace
We believe that our truly urgent need is to make our nation secure, our economy strong and our dollar sound. For every American this matter of the sound dollar is crucial. Without a sound dollar, every American family would face a renewal of inflation, an ever-increasing cost of living, the withering away of savings and life insurance policies.Collection: Strong
Our economy is the result of millions of decisions we all make every day about producing, earning, saving, investing, and spending.Collection: Decision
The world is more like it is now then it ever has before.Collection: Stupid
The proper role of government, however, is that of partner with the farmer -- never his master. By every possible means we must develop and promote that partnership -- to the end that agriculture may continue to be a sound, enduring foundation for our economy and that farm living may be a profitable and satisfying experience.Collection: Mean
Why don't you lay the footpaths where the students want to walk?Collection: Want
I come from the very heart of America.Collection: Heart