Dwight D. Eisenhower Quotes

I will continue to strive and struggle to apply what I think are conservative principles to the modern problems that we have so that not only in our legislative and governmental processes, but so far as I can help bring it about in our thinking processes, we will come to see the benefit of what I call the middle of-the-road Government. I realize that anybody that is trying to travel a middle road in any such thing as a great political process of the United States is attacked from both sides. I expect that, and if it were not so, I would think I were wrong. But I still believe that the adherence to conservative; principles in the finances of the Government, in the relationship of the Government to the individual, to the State and to the locality, at the same time recognizing the needs of a great and growing population beset with all kinds of problems that were unknown to our ancestors, do demand different actions on the part of Government than were so in the past. Now that is what I am trying to do, and I will keep trying.

It is unwise to make education too cheap. If everything is provided freely, there is a tendency to put no value on anything. Education must always have a certain price on it; even as the very process of learning itself must always require individual effort and initiative.

The peace we seek and need means much more than mere absence of war. It means the acceptance of law, and the fostering of justice, in all the world.

But I believe this: by and large, the United States ought to be able to choose for its President anybody that it wants, regardless of the number of terms he has served. That is what I believe. Now, some people have said "You let him get enough power and this will lead toward a one-party government." That, I don't believe. I have got the utmost faith in the long-term common sense of the American people. Therefore, I don't think there should be any inhibitions other than those that were in the 35-year age limit and so on. I think that was enough, myself.

We have erased segregation in those areas of national life to which Federal authority clearly extends. So doing in this, my friends, we have neither sought nor claimed partisan credit, and all such actions are nothing more -- nothing less than the rendering of justice. And we have always been aware of this great truth: the final battle against intolerance is to be fought -- not in the chambers of any legislature -- but in the hearts of men.

The only way to win the next world war is to prevent it.

The history of free men is never really written by chance-but by choice-their choice.

The essence of leadership is to get others to do something because they think you want it done and because they know it is worth while doing -- that is what we are talking about.

Change based on principle is progress. Constant change without principle becomes chaos.

I think the women, therefore, must be concerned with these values, and I return to my statement that 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.

In attempting to summarize the philosophy of the Republican Party I, myself, have sometimes used such phrases as moderate progressive and dynamic conservative, because we want to be known for what we are, the party of progress. And if we are the party of progress, we must be the party of peace and prosperity, because this is implicit in the term "progress."

The work of Dr. Salk is in the highest tradition of selfless and dedicated medical research. He has provided a means for the control of a dread disease. By helping scientists in other countries with technical information; by offering to them the strains of seed virus and professional aid so that the production of vaccine can be started by them everywhere; by welcoming them to his laboratory that they may gain a fuller knowledge, Dr. Salk is a benefactor of mankind. His achievement, a credit to our entire scientific community, does honor to all the people of the United States.

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 saw it, and thus, with God's help, it will continue to be.

I have tried to find a phrase in which to define what the Republican Party has done at home. I have said we were "progressive moderates." Right at the moment I rather favor the term "dynamic conservatism." I believe we should be conservative. I believe we should conserve on everything that is basic to our system. We should be dynamic in applying it to the problems of the day so that all 163 million Americans will profit from it. So for the moment I would say the record at home has been dynamic conservatism. You can go into the fields of agriculture, of the freedoms that have been restored to our economy, to the tax system-to everything we have done.

Now I think, speaking roughly, by leadership we mean the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it.