Eisenhower Quotes

“Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Today’s New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called “moderate Republicans.” The “political revolution” that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower.

The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the minimum wage—which sets a floor for other wages—tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Sugar maple!" Mary-Todd Holt knelt over her husband. "Are you all right?"
Eisenhower sat up, and egg-size lump blooming on his crown. "Of course I'm all right!" he managed, his words slurred. "You think a little insect can stop me?"
Reagan was unconvinced. "I don't know, Dad. She brained you with a baseball bat!"
"Hockey stick," Dan corrected.
"Those could be your last words, brat–”
― Gordon Korman, One False Note

“Frederick Douglass called Republicans the ‘Party of freedom and progress,’ and the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was the Republicans in Congress who authored the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments giving former slaves citizenship, voting rights, and due process of law. The Democrats on the other hand were the Party of Jim Crow. It was Democrats who defended the rights of slave owners. It was the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who championed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, but it was Democrats in the Senate who filibustered the bill.”
― Elbert Guillory

“When General George Patton tried to convince Eisenhower to make a push to conquer the city first, Eisenhower blithely asked, 'Well, who would want it?”
― Andrei Cherny, The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour

“All told, over the period 1932-1980, nearly half a century, the top federal income tax rate in the United States averaged 81 percent.”
― Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty First Century

“Dwight Eisenhower said that from the beginning, his mother and father operated on an assumption that set the course of his life - that the world could be fixed of its problems if every child understood the necessity of their existence. Eisenhower's parents assumed, and taught their children, that if their children weren't alive, their family couldn't function. (page 34)”
― Donald Miller, Father Fiction: Chapters for a Fatherless Generation

“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

“You joke, but Lovecraft really was deathly afraid of all sea life,” Rudy was raving.
“Among other things, like music and black people,” Danny conceded.
Yu shivered, “Well they are evil.”
Ashleigh finally decided to jump on the conversation-wagon, “Octopus or Africans?”
“Like that, right there,” Rudy said as though whatever point he was trying to make had been proved. “We’re always applying moral attributes to actions and objects. We like to compartmentalize. We are a nation divided in so many ways. Politically, economically, geographically.”
“This coming from a guy who jerked off to an Eisenhower biography?” Yu said, almost as a non-sequitur if it weren’t true.
“I wasn’t reading it; it had just fallen open!”
Yu karate chopped him.”
― Kyle St Germain, Dysfunction

“Eisenhower’s final warning was about the military-industrial complex. And what he didn’t say is that it developed while he was president.”
― Eugene J. McCarthy