Dean Acheson Quotes

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

Vietnam was worse than immoral it was a mistake.

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

Force can overcome force, but a free society cannot long steel itself to dominate another people by sheer force.

Dean Acheson

Throughout the Near East lay rare tinder for anti-Western propaganda: a Moslem culture and history, bitter Arab nationalism galled by Jewish immigration under British protection and with massive American financial support, the remnants of a colonial status, and a sense of grievance that a vast natural resource was being extracted by foreigners under arrangements thought unfair to those living on the surface. This tinder could be, and was, lighted everywhere...

Dean Acheson

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.

Dean Acheson

Unfortunately, the hyperbole of the inaugural outran the provisions of the budget.

Dean Acheson

Not all the arts of diplomacy are learned solely in its practice. There are other exercise yards.

Dean Acheson

I soon discovered that the greater part of a day in Old State was devoted to meetings. Where the boundaries of jurisdiction were fuzzy or overlapping, meetings became inevitable. Most questions affected a number of functional and geographic divisions...These meetings gave the illusion of action, but often frustrated it by attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. What was most often needed was not compromise but decision.

Dean Acheson
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