John Foster Dulles Quotes & Sayings

Our capacity to retaliate must be, and is, massive in order to deter all forms of aggression. — John Foster Dulles

Local defense will always be important. But there is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty land power of the Communist world. Local defense must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power. — John Foster Dulles

The United Nations represents not a final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive stage. Therefore its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization. — John Foster Dulles

There are plenty of problems in the world, many of them interconnected. But there is no problem which compares with this central, universal problem of saving the human race from extinction. — John Foster Dulles

You have to take chances for peace, just as you must take chances in war. Some say that we were brought to the verge of war. Of course we were brought to the verge of war. The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art ... If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost. We've had to look it square in the face ... We walked to the brink and we looked it in the face. We took strong action. — John Foster Dulles

Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which we usually reserve for war. — John Foster Dulles

The United Nations was not set up to be a reformatory. It was assumed that you would be good before you got in and not that being in would make you good. — John Foster Dulles

Our institutions of freedom will not survive unless they are constantly replenished by the faith that gave them birth. — John Foster Dulles

I'm making progress if today's problems are different from yesterday's. — John Foster Dulles

The mark of a successful organization isn't whether or not it has problems, its whether it has the same problems it had last year. — John Foster Dulles

The principle of neutrality ... has increasingly become an obsolete conception, and, except under very special circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception. — John Foster Dulles

Economic and military power can be developed under the spur of laws and appropriations. But moral power does not derive from any act of Congress. It depends on the relations of a people to their God. It is the churches to which we must look to develop the resources for the great moral offensive that is required to make human rights secure, and to win a just and lasting peace. — John Foster Dulles

The Soviets sought not a place in the sun, but the sun itself. Their objective was the world. They would not tolerate compromise on goals, only on tactics. — John Foster Dulles

Somehow we find it hard to sell our values, namely that the rich should plunder the poor. — John Foster Dulles

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year — John Foster Dulles

The United States of America does not have friends; it has interests. — John Foster Dulles

The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith. — John Foster Dulles

A man's accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail. — John Foster Dulles

I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy not approved by the Jews. — John Foster Dulles

We walked to the brink and we looked it in the face. — John Foster Dulles

Once - many, many years ago - I thought I made a wrong decision. Of course, it turned out that I had been right all along. But I was wrong to have thought that I was wrong. — John Foster Dulles

A peaceful world is a world in which differences are tolerated, and are not eliminated by violence. — John Foster Dulles

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence. — John Foster Dulles

Freedom & Duty always go hand in hand and if the free do not accept the duty of social responsibility, they will not long remain free. — John Foster Dulles

The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost. — John Foster Dulles

In order to bring a nation to support the burdens of maintaining great military establishments, it is necessary to create an emotional state akin to war psychology. There must be the portrayal of an external menace. This involves the development to a high degree of the nation-hero, nation-villain ideology and the arousing of the population to a sense of sacrifice. Once these exist, we have gone a long way on the path to war. — John Foster Dulles

I wouldn't attach too much importance to these student riots. I remember when I was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris, I used to go out and riot occasionally. — John Foster Dulles

Peace will never be won if men reserve for war their greatest efforts, Peace, too, requires well-directed and sustained sacrificial endeavor. Given that, we can, I believe, achieve the great goal of our foreign policy, that of enabling our people to enjoy in peace the blessings of liberty. — John Foster Dulles

A capacity to change is indispensable. Equally indispensable is the capacity to hold fast to that which is good. — John Foster Dulles