Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
Plans are nothing; planning is everything.
The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
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.
If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.
Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.
There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.
Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.
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.
Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.
Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
When you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions that you accept.
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.
Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.
There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.
Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.
Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.
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.
Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.
Pessimism never won any battle.
There is no victory at bargain basement prices.
Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.
Only Americans can hurt America.
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.
The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it's usually lousy.
An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame - Southern Methodist University game and doesn't care who wins.
The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!
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 are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.
There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.
No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know.
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
