" Paradoxically, the man who had distinguished himself in history’s greatest military conflict harbored a deep characterological aversion to conflict among his military colleagues as well as in the civil society over which he eventually presided. Ironically, the very skills of process leadership that gained Eisenhower such immense popularity and thus uniquely positioned him to transform his countrymen’s values on the race question evidenced a personality incapable of embracing the necessarily divisive role that civil rights leadership required. "

― Walter Isaacson , Profiles in Leadership: Historians on the Elusive Quality of Greatness