Eisenhower spoke these exact words at the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference in Washington, D.C., on 14 November 1957, and the transcript in the Public Papers of the Presidents carries them verbatim. He was quoting, not coining — he introduced the line as “the statement I heard long ago in the Army,” and Quote Investigator ↗ finds he had used an earlier form of it in a 1950 letter, crediting an anonymous soldier.
“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything” Dwight D. Eisenhower, Remarks at the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference, Washington, D.C., 14 November 1957 (Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957, p. 818). Eisenhower presented the line as a statement he had "heard long ago in the Army," not as his own coinage. · Verbatim: “I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”
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Provenance
The documented source
Source
Remarks at the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference
Delivered
Washington, D.C. — 14 November 1957
Printed in
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957, p. 818
Coinage
Not claimed — Eisenhower called it “the statement I heard long ago in the Army”
I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of “emergency” is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.
So, the first thing you do is to take all the plans off the top shelf and throw them out the window and start once more. But if you haven’t been planning you can’t start to work, intelligently at least.
Spoken, not coined
As transcribed in the Public Papers of the Presidents. The editorial note records that the President spoke in the Departmental Auditorium at 3:30 p.m.
31 December 1950 — Eisenhower writes to Hamilton Fish Armstrong: “Peace-time plans are of no particular value, but peace-time planning is indispensable,” crediting “a very successful soldier” (Quote Investigator ↗).
14 November 1957 — As President, he uses the compact form in Washington, D.C.: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything” (full transcript ↗).
1962 — Richard Nixon’s Six Crises prints a variant wording, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable,” and credits it to Eisenhower as one of his favourites — the earliest documented appearance of that phrasing (Quote Investigator ↗).
Today — Wikiquote lists the sentence in its sourced 1950s section, citing Public Papers of the Presidents… 1957, p. 818 (Wikiquote ↗).
✓Public domain
The quote comes from remarks delivered by a sitting U.S. President in the course of his official duties and published by the Government Printing Office in the Public Papers of the Presidents. Under 17 U.S.C. § 105 ↗, copyright protection is not available for any work of the United States Government, so the speech text is in the public domain.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What people get wrong
The attribution is right; the authorship claim usually is not. Eisenhower spoke the sentence, but he presented it as something he had heard, and the wording widely printed under his name is not the wording the transcript records — it is a variant first documented in Richard Nixon’s 1962 Six Crises.
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CoinageEisenhower as the originator He said otherwise
In the speech itself he introduces it as “the statement I heard long ago in the Army” (transcript ↗). Quote Investigator concludes he used and popularised the saying but “disclaimed credit by ascribing the words to an anonymous soldier” (QI ↗).
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Wording“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable” First printed by Nixon
This widely quoted sentence is first documented in Richard Nixon’s 1962 book Six Crises, where Nixon presents it as one of President Eisenhower’s favourites and credits Eisenhower for it. No earlier source for that wording is known, and it is not the wording the 1957 Eisenhower transcript records (QI ↗).
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AttributionRichard Nixon Credit drift
Having repeated the saying, Nixon started collecting it: Quote Investigator records a 1975 Christian Science Monitor item attributing “plans are useless, but planning is indispensable” to Nixon himself (QI ↗).
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Related sayingHelmuth von Moltke the Elder Different line
“No plan survives first contact with the enemy” is a separate, older adage condensed from Moltke’s 1871 wording; Quote Investigator treats it as a thematic antecedent, not the source of Eisenhower’s sentence (QI on Moltke ↗).
✓Eisenhower genuinely said these exact words on 14 November 1957 — the transcript ↗ proves it — but he was passing along Army lore, and the earliest evidence Quote Investigator ↗ reports for the proverb is Eisenhower’s own letter of 31 December 1950, where he again credited an unnamed soldier.
Context
Why he was saying it
The audience was a Cold War emergency-mobilization conference, and Eisenhower’s point was practical rather than aphoristic. “When you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing,” he told them: “the very definition of ‘emergency’ is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.”
His conclusion was not that planning is a waste. It was the opposite — you throw the binder away and start again, and you can only do that quickly if you have already done the thinking. “If you haven’t been planning you can’t start to work, intelligently at least.” The line has since been absorbed into management, military and startup folklore, usually shorn of the paragraph that explains it.
Take all the plans off the top shelf and throw them out the window — and start once more.
The 1950 version, seven years earlier
Quote Investigator documents an earlier Eisenhower use in a letter to Hamilton Fish Armstrong dated 31 December 1950: “Peace-time plans are of no particular value, but peace-time planning is indispensable.” There too he credited someone else — “a very successful soldier.”
Per Quote Investigator, the 2012 reference work The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs recorded that 1950 letter as the earliest evidence it found for the proverb.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Born in Denison, Texas in 1890, Dwight David Eisenhower rose to Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, the officer who ran the Normandy invasion, before serving as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. His professional life was, more than almost anyone’s, a life of staff planning — which is why a throwaway line about plans became one of the sentences he is most often quoted for in management and military writing. Characteristically, he refused the credit for it: he said he had picked it up in the Army long before.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Remarks at the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference,” Washington, D.C., November 14, 1957, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Service, Government Printing Office), 818.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Plans are worthless, but planning is everything’?” Last verified 6 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/plans-are-worthless-but-planning-is-everything/