Dean Acheson Quotes

30 quotes in 418 categories

• 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.
• Always remember that the future comes one day at a time.
• No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.
• A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
• Negotiation in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.
• The most important aspect of the relationship between the president and the secretary of state is that they both understand who is president.
• Washington is like a self-sealing tank on a military aircraft. When a bullet passes through, it closes up.
• Controversial proposals, once accepted, soon become hallowed.
• The great corrupter of public man is the ego.... Looking at the mirror distracts one's attention from the problem.
• Time spent in the advertising business seems to create a permanent deformity like the Chinese habit of foot-binding.
• It is worse than immoral, it's a mistake.
• The greatest mistake I made was not to die in office.
• 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…
• 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…
• Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role.
• I learned from the example of my father that the manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing…
• 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].
• The defensive perimeter [of the United States in East Asia] runs along the Aleutians to Japan and then goes to the Ryukyus.
• 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…
• If we learn the art of yielding what must be yielded to the changing present, we can save the best of the past.

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