Eisenhower Quotes

“their troops had not yet landed. Eisenhower was appalled by both British tactics and British strategy. “If one has to fight,” he told Gruenther, “then that is that. But I don’t see the point in getting into a fight to which there can be no satisfactory end, and in which the whole world believes you are playing the part of the bully and you do not even have the firm backing of your entire people.” Eisenhower said he had talked to an old British friend who was “truly bitter” about Eden’s gunboat diplomacy, and who had declared, “This is nothing except Eden trying to be bigger than he is.” Eisenhower said he “did not dismiss it that lightly. I believe that Eden and his associates have become convinced that this is the last straw and Britain simply had to react in the manner of the Victorian period.”29 The news over the weekend was quite disheartening. On Saturday, Dulles had entered Walter Reed”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President

“I am getting desperate with the inability of the men there to understand what can be spent on military weapons and what must be spent to wage the peace.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President

“the strongest reason of all for the United States [to stay out] is the fact that among all the powerful nations of the world the United States is the only one with a tradition of anti-colonialism. . . . The standing of the United States as the most powerful of the anti-colonial powers is an asset of incalculable value to the Free World”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President

“To avoid public mention of any name unless it can be done with favorable intent and connotation; reserve all criticism for the private conference; speak only good in public.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President

“Taken all together, 1952 is recalled as one of the bitterest campaigns of the twentieth century, and the one that featured the most mudslinging.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President

“To Eisenhower’s associates, the men were soldiers; to Eisenhower, they were citizens temporarily caught up in a war none of them wanted, but which they realized was necessary.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President

“The contrast between Eisenhower and those generals who gloried in war could not have been greater. Small wonder that millions of Americans in the 1940s felt that if their loved one had to join the fight, Eisenhower was the general they wanted for his commander.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President

“At one point Churchill growled that “the destinies of two great empires . . . seem to be tied up in some Goddamned things called LSTs.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President

“There is an irony here. MacArthur, the most political of generals, never succeeded in politics, while three of the most apolitical generals in American history, Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower, did.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President

“O.K., let's go." And again, cheers rang through Southwick House. Then the commanders rushed from their chairs and dashed outside to get to their command posts. Within thirty seconds the mess room was empty, except for Eisenhower, The outflow of the others and his sudden isolation were symbolic. A minute earlier he had been the most powerful man in the world. Upon his word the fate of thousands of men depended, and the future of great nations. The moment he uttered the word, however, he was powerless. For the next two or three days, there was almost nothing he could do that would in any way change anything. The invasion could not be stopped, not by him, not by anyone. A captain leading his company onto Omaha, or a platoon sergeant at Utah, would for the immediate future play a greater role than Eisenhower. He could now only sit and wait.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President

“SHAEF had prepared for everything except the weather. It now became an obsession. It was the one thing for which no one could plan, and the one thing that no one could control. In the end, the most completely planned military operation in history was dependent on the caprice of winds and waves. Tides and moon conditions were predictable, but storms were not. From the beginning, everyone had counted on at least acceptable weather for D-Day.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President