Dean Acheson quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Dean Acheson

Dean Acheson Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Dean Acheson on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

Vietnam was worse than immoral - it was a mistake.

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.

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charm never made a rooster.

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

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

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].

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Brains are no substitute for judgement.

Controversial proposals, once accepted, soon become hallowed.

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