Dean Acheson
Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Achesonwas an American statesman and lawyer. As United States Secretary of State in the administration of President Harry S. Truman from 1949 to 1953, he played a central role in defining American foreign policy during the Cold War. Acheson helped design the Marshall Plan and was a key player in the development of the Truman Doctrine and creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth11 April 1893
CityMiddletown, CT
CountryUnited States of America
The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull. This is not always easy to achieve.
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 that must be endured.
Always remember that the future comes one day at a time.
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role.
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.
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.
Negotiation in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.
If we learn the art of yielding what must be yielded to the changing present, we can save the best of the past.
The trouble with a free market economy is that it requires so many policemen to make it work.
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.
With a nation, as with a boxer, one of the greatest assurances of safety is to add reach to power.
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.
The great corrupter of public man is the ego.... Looking at the mirror distracts one's attention from the problem.