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.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the moral implications of military spending at the expense of providing basic needs to those in need.
Eisenhower's quote serves as a profound critique of how resources are allocated in society, emphasizing that the investment in weapons and military power diverts funds away from addressing the fundamental human needs such as food and clothing. It raises questions about priorities in governance and societal values, suggesting that every act of militarization comes at a cost to the most vulnerable members of society, ultimately portraying a loss of humanity in choices made for security and power.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of prioritizing social welfare over military expenditure.
If a man's associates find him guilty of being phony, if they find that he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teachings and actions must square with each other. The first great need, therefore, is integrity and high purpose.
The libraries of America are and must ever remain the home of free and inquiring minds. To them, our citizens-of all ages and races, of all creeds and persuasions-must be able to turn with clear confidence that there they can freely seek the whole truth, unvarnished by fashion and uncompromised by expediency.
You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
When pressure mounts and strain increases everyone begins to show the weaknesses in his makeup. It is up to the Commander to conceal his: above all to conceal doubt, fear, and distrust.
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.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
It may be -- I hope it is -- redemption to guess and perhaps perceive that the universe, the hell which we see for all its beauty, vastness, majesty, is only part of a whole which is quite unimaginable.
I say, let us think. Let each one express his thought. Let us become investigators, not followers, not cringers and crawlers. If there is in Heaven an infinite being, he never will be satisfied with the worship of cowards and hypocrites.
We discover that we do not know our role; we look for a mirror; we want to remove our make-up and take off what is false and real. But somewhere a piece of disguise that we forgot still sticks to us. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our mouth are bent. And so we walk around, a mockery and a mere half: neither having achieved being nor actors.
The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable.
The elimination of force at all costs is Utopian and the new movement which has arisen in the country and of whose dawn we have given a warning is inspired by the ideals which Guru Gobind Singh and Shivaji, Kamal Pasha and Reza Khan, Washington and Garibaldi, Lafayette and Lenin preached.
There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death.
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