Great Words From Trump And Other Presidents
By John J. Duncan Jr.
duncanj@knoxfocus.com
I think one of the greatest statements ever made by a President of the United States was by President Donald Trump in his inaugural address on January 20, 2025: “We will measure our success not only by little battles we win, but also by the wars that end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”
Since the end of World War II, we have had too many presidents, presidential advisors and members of Congress who have wanted to be modern-day Winston Churchills and prove how tough they were by getting us into wars we never should have gotten into.
We have been governed at times by chickenhawks and neo-cons like Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who never served in the military but led us into Iraq, or those like Senators Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton, who never served in combat in real battles, but who want us to go to war in Iran.
Trump’s statement quoted above made me think of other great statements by presidents that I wish would be framed and placed on the walls of offices at the White House and on Capitol Hill.
President John F. Kennedy, in a speech at the University of Washington in Seattle on November 16, 1961, said these great words: “We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient – that we are only six percent of the world’s population and that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind – that we cannot right every wrong, or reverse each adversity, and that, therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.”
The only slight alteration to these words would be that now we are less than four percent of the world’s population, so this statement is even more true today.
President John Quincy Adams, in a speech to the U.S. House of Representatives on July 4, 1821, said: “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence, has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
The “she” Adams is referencing is the U.S.
It is fascinating that Gen. George Washington, a great military leader, warned against “overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty.”
He added: “A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification.”
This address has been read in the U.S. Senate every year around George Washington’s birthday since 1862. Our leaders should consider these words in relation to our relationship with Israel.
Another great military leader, President Eisenhower, in his farewell address on Jan. 17, 1961, warned against “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.”
Then, he added these famous words: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
On August 31, 1959, Eisenhower said on a radio/TV broadcast from London: “I think the people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”
Finally, perhaps the greatest presidential words of all came in the Gettysburg Address and are especially needed now more than ever since Big Government continues to grow and take away even more of our freedom.
President Abraham Lincoln said: “It is for us the living to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
