It was also quoted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in remarks broadcast from the White House as part of a February 7, 1954, American Legion Program.
With slightly different wording, the statement appears much earlier in press reports dating from the end of the First World War, while a similar concept has been sought in Plato's Laws, and in Karl Marx's often-misrepresented[note 1] partial quote that "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.
[citation needed] Although the adage occasionally means that all soldiers in combat are "converted" under fire, it is most often used to express the belief of the speaker that all people seek a divine power when they are facing an extreme threat.
[1][12] The quote is also referenced when discussing the opposite effect — that warfare causes some soldiers to question their existing belief in God due to the death and violence around them.
They paraphrased Harvard professor Jeffrey Frankel, who originally wrote in the Cato Journal a year earlier, "They say 'there are no atheists in foxholes.'