Acheson Quotes & Sayings

If I displayed this cup, I might look at it once or twice a week. By using it, I get pleasure from it continually. — Lila Acheson Wallace

The great corrupter of public man is the ego. Looking at the mirror distracts one's attention from the problem. — Dean Acheson

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

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

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

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

As far as we were concerned, we were operators, we were administrators. I don't ever recall going to Dean Acheson and asking for any counsel or advice on administration, but I had the greatest respect for him, as I have today. — Paul Hoffman

Charm never made a rooster. — Dean Acheson

Negotiating in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree. — Dean Acheson

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

It is worse than immoral, it's a mistake. — Dean Acheson

Like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the east. It would also carry infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe through Italy and France, already threatened by the strongest domestic Communist parties in Western Europe. The Soviet Union was playing one of the greatest gambles in history at minimal cost. It did not need to will all the possibilities. Even one or two offered immense gains. We and we alone were in a position to break up the play. — Dean Acheson

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

Between the trees, on gentle and too cleverly irregular slopes of sweet green grass, the bright umbrellas shaded the hotel's guests from the unfaltering radiance of the Lado-Acheson sun. — William Gibson

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

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

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! — Dean Acheson

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. — Dean Acheson

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. — Dean Acheson

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. — Dean Acheson

I think Churchill is right, the only thing to be said for democracy is that there is nothing else that's any better, and therefore he used to say, Tyranny tempered by assassination, but lots of assassination. People say, If the Congress were more representative of the people it would be better. I say the Congress is too damn representative. It's just as stupid as the people are; just as uneducated, just as dumb, just as selfish. — Dean Acheson

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

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

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]. — Dean Acheson

Any nation which claims that this [North Atlantic] treaty is directed against it should be reminded of the Biblical admonition that 'The guilty flee when no man pursueth. — Dean Acheson

Entwined with the strand of conservatism in the Democratic party is the strand of empiricism. — Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson was one of the very best and brightest of the men who ever came to Washington. — Katharine Graham

Truman, Acheson knew, was far more sentimental than generally known, or than he wished people to know, far more touched by gestures that to many might seem routine. On board his plane later in the year, bound again for Key West, he would write Acheson a brief longhand note marked and underscored "Personal." It was good of you to see us off. You always do the right thing. I'm still a farm boy and when the Secretary of State of the greatest Republic comes to the airport to see me off on a vacation, I can't help but swell up a little. "And then he was so fair," Acheson would say. "He didn't make different decisions with different people. He called everyone together. You were all heard and you all got the answer together. He was a square dealer all the way through. — David McCullough

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

I doubt very much if a man whose main literary interests were in works by Mr. Zane Grey, admirable as they may be, is particularly equipped to be the chief executive of this country, particularly where Indian Affairs are concerned. — Dean Acheson

Not only did he [Dean Acheson] not suffer fools gladly, he did not suffer them at all. — Lester B. Pearson

I have almost invariably found that charm is used as a substitute for intelligence in persons of both sexes. Thus, I have always been and will remain wary of it. — Dean Acheson

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

Brains are no substitute for judgement. — Dean Acheson

I knew right away that it was a gorgeous idea. — Lila Acheson Wallace

Acheson immediately understood the urgency of this message. He summoned Ambassador Franks and told him that the United States resolutely opposed "the use of force or the threat of the use of force" against Iran, and that Truman himself had "stressed most strongly that no situation should be allowed to develop into an armed conflict between a body of British troops and the Persian forces. — Stephen Kinzer

After World War II, American leaders were, in Dean Acheson's words, 'present at the creation' of a global order. Now at the end of the cold war, we desperately need that same vision, that leadership, that creativity to be applied to the governance of the global marketplace. — John J. Sweeney

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

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

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

But just as misery cannot crawl across an endless path, so does the trail of happiness occasionally reach a sharp end." - The Last Gift — Carla Acheson

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

The manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured. — Dean Acheson

Vietnam was worse than immoral - it was a mistake. — Dean Acheson

Mr. Stevenson has a degree alright-a PhD from the Acheson College of Cowardly Communist Containment. — Richard M. Nixon

Somehow Acheson had been scarred during the McCarthy era; it was not so much that he had done anything wrong as the fact that he had been forced to defend himself. By that very defense, by all the publicity, he had become controversial. He had been in print too often, it was somehow indiscreet of Dean to be attacked by McCarthy. — David Halberstam

Acheson then jumped into action with a dramatic and deliberately florid statement of what was later to be known as the "domino theory" of foreign interconnection. "We are met at Armageddon," he began: Like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the East. It would also carry infection to spread through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe through Italy and France. . . . The Soviet Union was playing one of the greatest gambles in history at minimal cost. . . . We and we alone were in a position to break up this play.44 — James T. Patterson

Controversial proposals, once accepted, soon become hallowed. — Dean Acheson

Arriving early at a party is always awkward. If you hang back and wait you look like someone who the cops should be called about. If you knock early you risk finding a host in their underwear not ready for social activity. I knocked early because underwear and social awkwardness are kind of my specialty. — Hugh Acheson

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

A painting is like a man. If you can live without it, then there isn't much point in having it. — Lila Acheson Wallace

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

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

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

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