Acheson's Quotes

#1. After World War II, American leaders were, in Dean Acheson's words, 'present at the creation' of a global order. Now at the end of the cold war, we desperately need that same vision, that leadership, that creativity to be applied to the governance of the global marketplace.

John J. Sweeney

#2. Between the trees, on gentle and too cleverly irregular slopes of sweet green grass, the bright umbrellas shaded the hotel's guests from the unfaltering radiance of the Lado-Acheson sun.

William Gibson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

#6. Charm never made a rooster.

Dean Acheson

#7. Controversial proposals, once accepted, soon become hallowed.

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

#11. 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 equipped to be the chief executive of this country, particularly where Indian Affairs are concerned.

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

#14. 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.

Dean Acheson

#15. Any nation which claims that this [North Atlantic] treaty is directed against it should be reminded of the Biblical admonition that 'The guilty flee when no man pursueth.

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

#17. If I displayed this cup, I might look at it once or twice a week. By using it, I get pleasure from it continually.

Lila Acheson Wallace

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

Dean Acheson

#19. 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!

Dean Acheson

#20. As far as we were concerned, we were operators, we were administrators. I don't ever recall going to Dean Acheson and asking for any counsel or advice on administration, but I had the greatest respect for him, as I have today.

Paul Hoffman

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

#23. I knew right away that it was a gorgeous idea.

Lila Acheson Wallace

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

Dean Acheson

#25. Brains are no substitute for judgement.

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

#27. 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].

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

#29. 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.

Dean Acheson

#30. Not only did he [Dean Acheson] not suffer fools gladly, he did not suffer them at all.

Lester B. Pearson

#31. 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.

Dean Acheson

#32. But just as misery cannot crawl across an endless path, so does the trail of happiness occasionally reach a sharp end." - The Last Gift

Carla Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

#35. Mr. Stevenson has a degree alright-a PhD from the Acheson College of Cowardly Communist Containment.

Richard M. Nixon

#36. 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.

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

#41. Vietnam was worse than immoral - it was a mistake.

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

#44. A painting is like a man. If you can live without it, then there isn't much point in having it.

Lila Acheson Wallace

#45. Dean Acheson was one of the very best and brightest of the men who ever came to Washington.

Katharine Graham

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson