Eisenhower the Peacenik

Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and co-operation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace. Dwight D. Eisenhower

Eisenhower

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it. Dwight D. Eisenhower

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. Dwight D. Eisenhower

May we, in our dealings with all the peoples of the earth, ever speak the truth and serve justice. Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure. Dwight D. Eisenhower

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 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 cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book… Dwight D. Eisenhower

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953

Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech at Dartmouth College, June 14, 1953

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog. Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech to the Republican National Committee, January 31, 1958

We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective. Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, April 2, 1957

“…in [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

“During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude…”

– Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

“…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

– Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

This entry was posted in Utopian Heroes. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *