Dwight D. Eisenhower Quotes

The most difficult issues—the toughest decisions—are the ones that invariably end up on the President’s desk.

The issues that cross a president's desk are never easy. The easy questions don't even get to the president.

That's part of being President. You can't focus on any one thing to the exclusion of all other things.

I learned running the government for the Presidency, which I always thought was difficult, is even more difficult than I thought.

The problems of the President of the United States are not susceptible to scientific treatment.

The presidency is not about easy choices.

I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice .... These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I supposed it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible and learn what appears to be wise and right. The subject is difficult, and good men do not agree.

You are on the ground. You see the needs of the situation, and I shall back up whatever you do.

Good politics starts with empathy, proceeds to analysis, then sets out values and establishes the vision, before getting to the nitty-gritty of policy solutions.

A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.

The thing that differs me from a lot of other people running for the President of the United States is that I focus on the problem first. Then I focus on what the solution is.

The best episodes of 'The West Wing' that dealt with policy and stuff, in my opinion, were the ones where they were in the middle of a crisis, and they were trying to figure out how to solve problems.

Don't fight the problem, decide it.

The task of the government is not only to pour honey into a cup, but sometimes to give bitter medicine.

What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.

I am someone who facilitates the President’s ability to make tough decisions.

It is easy to say that something should be done. However to say what, when and how is more difficult.

A President in a ... crisis makes, say, 10 bets a day. Maybe I made the wrong choice three times.

The extreme scarcity of political leaders of any caliber is owing to the fact that they are called upon to decide at any moment, and in detail, problems which the increased size of societies may well have rendered insoluble.

The President has rarely leisure to give close or continuous attention to foreign policy.

As President I'll make mistakes because I'm going to do things ... and people who do things err.

When you're President you have to make a lot of tough decisions. You have to keep lining them up and making them.

The president is the only one we have to make decisions. We have no one else.

It is axiomatic in politics that the earlier one addresses a problem, the more the alternatives and the easier the solutions.

I … think it is safer, when a practical question arises, to decide that question directly, and not indirectly, by deciding a general abstraction supposed to include it, and also including a great deal more.