Our pleasures were simple-they included survival.
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.
The best morale exists when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear it it's usually lousy.
People in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than governments.
Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.
The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!
The United States strongly seeks a lasting agreement for the discontinuance of nuclear weapons tests. We believe that this would be an important step toward reduction of international tensions and would open the way to further agreement on substantial measures of disarmament.
Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.
In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains.
Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.
No one can defeat us unless we first defeat ourselves.
I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens.
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn't know it then.
Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.
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.
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.
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.
In most communities it is illegal to cry 'fire' in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
I deplore the need or the use of troops anywhere to get American citizens to obey the orders of constituted courts.
I'm saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am.
You do not lead by hitting people over the head – that's assault, not leadership.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
The purpose is clear. It is safety with solvency. The country is entitled to both.
Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates.
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.
I never saw a pessimistic general win a battle.
It is far more important to be able to hit the target than it is to haggle over who makes a weapon or who pulls a trigger.
Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.
This desk of mine is one at which a man may die, but from which he cannot resign.
Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.
Well, when you come down to it, I don't see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?
Only Americans can hurt America.
The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past.
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.
The supreme belief of our society is the dignity and freedom of the individual. To the respect of that dignity, to the defense of that freedom, all effort is pledged.
I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem-and that yardstick is Is it good for America.
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.
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
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.
War settles nothing.
Plans are nothing; planning is everything.
I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
