Dwight D. Eisenhower Quotes

We give up our liberties too casually [in emergencies and crises]

History has shown that Big Government expands quickest in the immediate aftermath of a crisis - real or manufactured.

Many think it is not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences laws or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principals, to accommodate it.

It is fundamental that the great powers of Congress to conduct war and to regulate the Nation's foreign relations are subject to the constitutional requirements of due process. The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with fundamental constitutional guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit governmental action.

There are certain emergencies of nations, in which expedients, that in the ordinary state of things ought to be forborne, become essential to the public weal.

I cannot say that our country could have no secret police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police.

I’d rather risk being a terrorists victim than live under a surveillance state.

The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad.

The integrity of China was more important than [the people] in Tiananmen Square.

With the shock of war the state comes into its own again.

A standing army is a standing menace to liberty.

[In the event of war, Americans would] resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.

Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

It’s useful to compare our preparations for epidemics with our preparations for war.

The second term of the Bush administration and first five years of the Obama presidency have been devoted to codifying and institutionalizing the vast and unchecked powers that are typically vested in leaders in the name of war. Those powers of secrecy, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and due-process-free assassination are not going anywhere. They are now permanent fixtures not only in the US political system but, worse, in American political culture.

Carelessness about our security is dangerous, carelessness about our freedom is also dangerous.

We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America.

It's critical how we want to use these spy programs, these electronic capabilities, where we want to draw the line, and who should approve these programs, these decisions, and at what level, for engaging in operations that could lead us as a nation into a war.

As government grows, freedom recedes.

Hard to remember who is more dangerous: the people who are attacking our liberties overseas, or those who are suppressing them at home.

We can't simply scare people into giving up their rights, on the basis, oh, this protects us from terrorism.

I can't possibly put myself in his [Tony Blair's] shoes and be inside his head but what I can say is that the security of the nation is the first duty of any government but at the same time for me going to war would always be the last resort. I would exhaust all other opportunities first.

In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific reassurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.

How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?

By contrast, China is a repressive regime that denies its citizens the essential freedoms of religion, political dissent and representative self-government.