Dean Acheson Quotes

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.

I learned from the example of my father that the manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.

Always remember that the future comes one day at a time.

Between 9 and 10 AM the American radio is concerned almost exclusively with love. It seems a little like ending breakfast with a stiff bourbon.

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.

Negotiation in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.

The great corrupter of public men is the ego - corrupter because distracter. Wealth, sensuality, power cannot hold a candle to it. Looking in the mirror distracts one's attention from the problem.

Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.

I have a curious and apprehensive feeling as I watch JFK that he is sort of an Indian snake charmer.

You can't argue with a river, it isgoing to flow.You can dam it up?put it to useful purposes?deflect it, but you can't argue with it.

The limitations imposed by democratic political practices makes it difficult to conduct our foreign affairs in the national interest.

The test for aid to poor nations is therefore whether it makes them capable of being productive. If it fails to do so, it is likely to make them even poorer in the - not so very - long run.

No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.

Charm never made a rooster.

Vietnam was worse than immoral - it was a mistake.

With a nation, as with a boxer, one of the greatest assurances of safety is to add reach to power.

The trouble with a free market economy is that it requires so many policemen to make it work.

Brains are no substitute for judgement.

How could the USA champion individual freedom in the world generally while denying it to an important minority in its own country.

The future comes one day at a time [so don't fear and try to solve all the worries and problems of the future today].

The greatest mistake I made was not to die in office.

Greatness is a quality of character and is not the result of circumstances.

If we learn the art of yielding what must be yielded to the changing present, we can save the best of the past.

Washington is like a self-sealing tank on a military aircraft. When a bullet passes through, it closes up.

We have actively sought and are actively seeking to make the United Nations an effective instrument of international cooperation.

Time spent in the advertising business seems to create a permanent deformity like the Chinese habit of foot-binding.

Controversial proposals, once accepted, soon become hallowed.

No man comes out of his own memorandum of conversation looking second best.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

To leave positions of great responsibility and authority is to die a little, but the time comes when that must be faced.

I will undoubtedly have to seek what is happily known as gainful employment, which I am glad to say does not describe holding public office.

The defensive perimeter [of the United States in East Asia] runs along the Aleutians to Japan and then goes to the Ryukyus.

The Iraqi is really not whacky toady, perhaps, even tacky. When they gave him the word, he gave us the bird and joined with the Arabs, by cracky!

The most important aspect of the relationship between the president and the secretary of state is that they both understand who is president.

[President Truman] was free of the greatest vice in a leader, his ego never came between him and his job.

Americans assume Canada to be bestowed as a right and accept this bounty, as they do air, without thought or appreciation.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull. This is not always easy to achieve.

The future comes one day at a time.

A memorandum is written to protect the writer - not to inform his reader.

Americans assume Canada to be bestowed as a right and accept this bounty as they do air without thought or appreciation.