Dwight D. Eisenhower Peace Quotations

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.

Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

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.

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.

In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains.

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.

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

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.

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.

There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.

We have heard much of the phrase, ''peace and friendship.'' This phrase, in expressing the aspiration of America, is not complete. We should say instead, ''peace and friendship, in freedom.'' This, I think, is America's real message to the rest of the world.

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. (31 August 1959)

Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can complel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

"In the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love."

Since the advent of nuclear weapons, it seems clear that there is no longer any alternative to peace, if there is to be a happy and well world.

Military power serves the cause of security by making prohibitive the cost of any aggressive attack. It serves the cause of peace by holding up a shield behind which the patient constructive work of peace can go on.

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.

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.

There can be no true disarmament without peace, and there can be no real peace without very material disarmament.

Having established as our goals a lasting world peace with justice and the security of freedom on this earth, we must be prepared to make whatever sacrifices are demanded as we pursue this path to its end.

For all that we cherish and justly desire - for ourselves or for our children - the securing of peace is the first requisite.

The day will come when the people will make so insistent their demand that there be peace in the world that the Governments will get out of the way and let them have peace.

So - our readiness to meet and defeat this kind of possible attack is forced upon us, both as a potent preventive of actual war and to insure survival in event of attack. This alertness to danger has to be translated into specific policies and activities in the several parts of the world where our rights - our way of life - can be seriously damaged. Work of this kind occupies my days and nights.

The building of such a peace is a bold and solemn purpose. To proclaim it is easy. To serve it will be hard. And to attain it, we must be aware of its full meaning - and ready to pay its full price.

The only answer to a regime that wages total cold war is to wage total peace.

For a just and lasting peace, here is my solemn pledge to you: by dedication and patience we will continue, as long as I remain your President, to work for this simple - this single - this exclusive goal.

As for myself and for the Secretary of State and others involved, including those in the Legislature, we stand ready to do anything, to meet with anyone, anywhere, as long as we may do so in self-respect, demanding the respect due this Nation, and there is any slightest idea or chance of furthering this great cause of peace.

I have said time and again there is no place on this earth to which I would not travel, there is no chore I would not undertake if I had any faintest hope that, by so doing, I would promote the general cause of world peace.

In vast stretches of the earth, men awoke today in hunger. They will spend the day in unceasing toil. And as the sun goes down they will still know hunger. They will see suffering in the eyes of their children. Many despair that their labor will ever decently shelter their families or protect them against disease. So long as this is so, peace and freedom will be in danger throughout our world. For wherever free men lose hope of progress, liberty will be weakened and the seeds of conflict will be sown.

Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.

There can be no peace without law.

We look upon this shaken earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose-the building of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails.

We have heard much of the phrase, peace and friendship. This phrase, in expressing the aspiration of America, is not complete. We should say instead, peace and friendship, in freedom. This, I think, is America's real message to the rest of the world.

We ... must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow.

People in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than governments.