Dwight D. Eisenhower Quotes About War
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War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.
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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.
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The essence of war is fire, famine, and pestilence. They contribute to its outbreak; they are among its weapons; they become its consequences.
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The only answer to a regime that wages total cold war is to wage total peace.
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The hope of the world is that wisdom can arrest conflict between brothers. I believe that war is the deadly harvest of arrogant and unreasoning minds. And I find grounds for this belief in the wisdom literature of Proverbs. It says in effect this: Panic strikes like a storm and calamity comes like a whirlwind to those who hate knowledge and ignore their God.
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First, separate ground, sea and air warfare is gone forever. If ever again we should be involved in war, we will fight it in all elements, with all services, as one single concentrated effort.
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I will not get into a pissing contest with that skunk [Joseph McCarthy].
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The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.
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When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were - to the very last minute - a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.
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I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
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Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
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More than any single action by the government since the end of the war, this one would change the face of America with straightaways, cloverleaf turns, bridges, and elongated parkways. Its impact on the American economy-the jobs it would produce in manufacturing and construction, the rural areas it would open up-was beyond calculation.
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I know something about that war, and I never want to see that history repeated. But, my fellow Americans, it certainly can be repeated if the peace-loving democratic nations again fearfully practice a policy of standing idly by while big aggressors use armed force to conquer the small and weak.
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Morale is the greatest single factor in successful wars.
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A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled, the transportation systems destroyed, sanitation implements and systems all gone? That isn't preventive war; that is war.
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We need an adequate defense, but every arms dollar we spend above adequacy has a long-term weakening effect upon the nation and its security.
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Because, therefore, we are defending a way of life, we must be respectful of that way of life as we proceed to the solution of our problem. We must not violate its principles and its precepts, and we must not destroy from within what we are trying to defend from without.
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And the next thing is that every war is going to astonish you in the way it occurred, and in the way it is carried out.
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Arms alone can give the world no permanent peace, no confident security. Arms are solely for defense - to protect from violent assault what we already have. They are only a costly insurance. They cannot add to human progress.
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I say when you get into a war, you should win as quick as you can, because your losses become a function of the duration of the war. I believe when you get in a war, get everything you need and win it.
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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.
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War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men. Though you follow the trade of the warrior, you do so in the spirit of Washington - not of Genghis Khan. For Americans, only threat to our way of life justifies resort to conflict.
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The problem is not merely man against man or nation against nation. It is man against war.
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It will begin with its President taking a simple, firm resolution. The resolution will be: To forego the diversions of politics and to concentrate on the job of ending the Korean war-until that job is honorably done. That job requires a personal trip to Korea. I shall make that trip. Only in that way could I learn how best to serve the American people in the cause of peace. I shall go to Korea.
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You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics.
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Do not needlessly endanger your lives until I give you the signal.
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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.
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May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
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The friendship of a dog is precious. It becomes even more so when one is so far removed from home.... I have a Scottie. In him I find consolation and diversion... he is the "one person" to whom I can talk without the conversation coming back to war.
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You can't have this kind of war. There just aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Born: October 14, 1890
- Died: March 28, 1969
- Occupation: 34th U.S. President
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