E. H. Harriman Quotes

I always read everything on the desks of people I went to see in Moscow, London, Paris I found it quite useful.

Conferences at the top level are always courteous. Name-calling is left to the foreign ministers.

Actually I'd had a certain amount of experience in Europe in the inter-war period, as a banker, and I was also a member of the Board of Directors of the International Chamber of Commerce.

Yet the whole preamble of the second authorization act for the Marshall Plan showed the direction Congress was ready to take about breaking down barriers within Europe.

Every man should make up his mind that if he expects to succeed, he must give an honest return for the other man's dollar.

As far as the Russians were concerned, I felt the reverse; they had adequate gold, if they wanted to buy, and they weren't dependent upon international trade. I felt they were more self-sufficient.

Roosevelt was determined to stop Stalin from taking over Eastern Europe. He thought they finally had an agreement on Poland. Before Roosevelt died, he realized that Stalin had broken his agreement.

It is never safe to look into the future with eyes of fear.

Americans wanted to settle all our difficulties with Russia and then go to the movies and drink Coke.

Roosevelt was the one who had the vision to change our policy from isolationism to world leadership. That was a terrific revolution. Our country's never been the same since.

The Russians often took advantage of Lend-Lease.

There's a myth that Roosevelt gave Stalin Eastern Europe. I was with Roosevelt every day at Yalta.

I think Stalin was afraid of Roosevelt. Whenever Roosevelt spoke, he sort of watched him with a certain awe. He was afraid of Roosevelt's influence in the world.

We became convinced that, regardless of Stalin's awful brutality and his reign of terror, he was a great war leader. Without Stalin, they never would have held.

Poland, of course, was the key country. I remember Stalin telling me that the plains of Poland were the invasion route of Europe to Russia and always had been, and therefore he had to control Poland.

no war really comes unexpectedly. The drums are beating long before a single shot is fired.

The war changed everybody's attitude. We became international almost overnight.

We were good reformers, but we weren't good enough. We elected a candidate and then, busy with our own affairs, we left him hanging in mid-air. Reformers are such part-time pillars of society!

The Russians obtained a number of plants under Lend-Lease, which had been authorized by Washington, that I thought were not justified for their war effort. They wanted them for postwar use.

Money is what you'd get on beautifully without if only other people weren't so crazy about it.

No foreign policy will stick unless the American people are behind it. And unless Congress understands it. And unless Congress understands it, the American people aren't going to understand it.

Here was a corporation behaving like a monster though the individuals who owned its stock were human cultivated men. A corporation has no soul.

[On social change:] What I say is that if one country is annexed by another, its nationality is not changed overnight. Social processes are often very, very slow.

Next to entertaining or impressive talk a thoroughgoing silence manages to intrigue most people.

(musicians always make straight for the piano in anybody’s house, unlike writers, who can ignore a typewriter in the same room forever.)” -- margaret case harriman