Harriman Quotes & Sayings

We take too much of our heritage for granted. Harriman State Park is not Mt. Vernon. Nor is it Yosemite. But heritage cannot be measured on a scale... — Mary E. Reed

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! — Margaret Case Harriman

It is never safe to look into the future with eyes of fear. — E. H. Harriman

The war changed everybody's attitude. We became international almost overnight. — W. Averell Harriman

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. — W. Averell Harriman

[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. — Margaret Case Harriman

I have a very hyper-sensitive sister, and when she saw in the papers the next day that I had proclaimed myself the daughter of an immigrant, she didn't like it at all, and was with difficulty deterred from writing to the press that my father might be an immigrant, but not hers. — Margaret Case Harriman

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. — W. Averell Harriman

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. — W. Averell Harriman

How could you justify giving Holland twice the amount of money that you gave Belgium? Well, finally, I put it up to them. They said that they couldn't do it; it would destroy them. I said they had to do it. And I finally got support from Hoffman on it. — W. Averell Harriman

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

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. — W. Averell Harriman

Every man should make up his own mind that if he expect to succeed, he must give an honest return for the other man's dollar. — Edward H. Harriman

Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more. — Edward H. Harriman

It never occurred to me that we would have as grandiose a program as the Marshall Plan, but I felt that we had to do something to save Europe from economic disaster which would encourage the Communist takeover. — W. Averell Harriman

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

The biggest trade that Germany and Britain had was with each other, in the prewar period; I think I'm right in that. Two highly industrialized nations had the most trade with each other, and it wasn't tariff policies alone that made trade relations better for both of them. — W. Averell Harriman

Much of the aid we first gave to Russia we took away from what we promised Britain. So in a sense, Britain participated in a very real way in the recovery of Russia. — W. Averell Harriman

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. — W. Averell Harriman

I think there are telegrams that may or may not be available, which indicated that I very much had in mind the need to give Europe substantial aid after the war, after Lend-Lease was over. — W. Averell Harriman

My mother told me," the boy replied, turning a page of the catalog. "Haven't you seen Santa at the mall and all the kids who sit on his knee and tell him what they want for Christmas?" "My mother says they're just men in Santa suits." "Do you get presents on Christmas morning?" "Yes." "And you don't think Santa brings them." "Nope. My mother brings them." "What about the Easter Bunny?" "There's no such thing as the Easter Bunny." The two little girls at the table behind them heard this and started to cry. Their parents glared at Harriman and the boy — Billy Wells

clinical literature is virtually unanimous that full MPD [Multiple Personality Disorder] cannot be created iatrogenically. There is no evidence that such a case has been demonstrated; clinicians of widely different orientations have studied the available information and arrived at similar conclusions (e.g., Braun, 1984; Gruenewald, 1984; Kernberg, in press; Kluft, 1982; Putnam, 1989). Nonetheless, most of these observers have noted that many of the phenomena of MPD can be created quite readily, and that phenomena with striking superficial resemblance to MPD can be generated with relatively little effort. In fact, I noted in passing (Kluft, 1986a) that I had replicated the interventions of Harriman (1942,1943), Leavitt (1947), and Kampman (1976), and found the resultant phenomena clearly distinguishable from clinical MPD.
(from Kluft, R. P. (1989). Dissociation: Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 083-091: Iatrongenic creation of new alter personalities) — Richard P. Kluft

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. — W. Averell Harriman

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

We were talking about really getting Europe on its feet. It was our hope that there would be a breakdown of trade barriers in Europe first, and then eventually a breakdown internationally, which would help increase trade with Europe. — W. Averell Harriman

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. — W. Averell Harriman

For the first time in its history, Western Civilization is in danger of being destroyed internally by a corrupt, criminal ruling cabal which is centered around the Rockefeller interests, which include elements from the Morgan, Brown, Rothschild, Du Pont, Harriman, Kuhn-Loeb, and other groupings as well. This junta took control of the political, financial, and cultural life of America in the first two decades of the twentieth century. — Carroll Quigley

[On women getting the vote:] The newspapers, poor dears, looked of course for something very spectacular. But then newspapers are always apt to be more interested in phenomena like meteors than in the slow growth of a mighty tree. Wait ten years, and the politicians will one day wake up and say, 'Look who's here! — Margaret Case Harriman

If E.F. Harriman paid me what he's paying those guys to stop me from robbing him, I'd stop robbing him. — Butch Cassidy

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. — W. Averell Harriman

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

[On the socialites in New York in the Nineties who devoted themselves to politics, charities, and other volunteer work:] I never knew but one woman who devoted her life exclusively to the social game. She ended her days arranging dinner parties with paper dolls, a breakdown pitiful to watch. — Margaret Case Harriman

There was a time in my life when election year was nothing to me, but in 1912, I joined that great army of Americans who drop a stitch in their routine every four years, and give themselves up to backing first a candidate for the nomination and afterwards a nominee. — Margaret Case Harriman

Women like Pamela Harriman and Patricia Duff are basically Anna Nicole Smith from the waist down. Let's just call it for what it is. They're whores. — Ann Coulter

No war really comes unexpectedly. The drums are beating long before a single shot is fired. — Margaret Case Harriman

They were men linked more to one another, their schools, their own social class and their own concerns than they were linked to the country. Indeed, about one of them, Averell Harriman, there would always be a certain taint, as if somehow Averell were a little too partisan and too ambitious (Averell had wanted to be President whereas the rest of them knew that the real power lay in letting the President come to them; the President could take care of rail strikes, minimum wages and farm prices, and they would take care of national security). — David Halberstam

The first and most essential quality of a presidential candidate, as Averell Harriman once pointed out, is that he should lust for the job - he should want it more than all things, with a passion surpassing all emotion and probably even all principle. — Theodore H. White

This was the period when I used all the influence I had to get the British to abandon their export trade, and as much as possible convert all of their manufacturing facilities to the immediate needs of the war, including civilian, as well as military requirements. — W. Averell Harriman

For twenty years it had been generally known that an insidious Lobby was maintained in Washington to influence legislation and executive action on behalf of vested interests ... The lobby was a creature of darkness. It worked behind closed doors and whispered in corners. This ancient industry was one form of invisible government. — Margaret Case Harriman

The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's eugenics studies were initially endowed by Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the head of the Krupp munitions monolith, and James Loeb, of the Kuhn-Loeb banking family. Loeb's relatives, the Warburgs, were banking partners of William Rockefeller, and both families were responsible for setting up the American Harriman family - also movers and shakers in eugenics - in business. — Jim Keith

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

It was these same families [Rothschild, Rockefeller, Harriman, Bush, etc] who funded the eugenics movement which is pledged to remove the lower genetic blood streams and leave only those of superior stock. Eugenics today often goes under the title of 'population control'. The best known of the population control organizations is Planned Parenthood which began life under another name at the London offices of the British Eugenics Society. — David Icke

I was quite ready to accept certain restrictions on the United States. After all, there was a great dollar shortage. It was quite clear that the more prosperous Europe became, the more business there would be in the United States. — W. Averell Harriman

It was fear. He didn't want to see a united Germany. Stalin made it clear to me - I spoke with him many times - that they couldn't afford to let Germany build up again. They'd been invaded twice, and he wasn't willing to have it happen again. — W. Averell Harriman

We both agreed that Stalin was determined to hold out against the Germans. He told us he'd never let them get to Moscow. But if he was wrong, they'd go back to the Urals and fight. They'd never surrender. — W. Averell Harriman

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. — W. Averell Harriman

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. — W. Averell Harriman

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

It meant good-bye to London and to Churchill, whose company Harriman thoroughly enjoyed, and to Pamela, whose bed he enjoyed (the lovers' hiatus lasted almost three decades, until 1971, when Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward became the third Mrs. Harriman). — William Manchester

The Russians often took advantage of Lend-Lease. — W. Averell Harriman