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
If we learn the art of yielding what must be yielded to the changing present, we can save the best of the past.
Greatness is a quality of character and is not the result of circumstances.
How could the USA champion individual freedom in the world generally while denying it to an important minority in its own country.
The greatest mistake I made was not to die in office.
With a nation, as with a boxer, one of the greatest assurances of safety is to add reach to power.
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.
Negotiation in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.
The great corrupter of public man is the ego.... Looking at the mirror distracts one's attention from the problem.
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.
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.
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.
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 a curious and apprehensive feeling as I watch JFK that he is sort of an Indian snake charmer.
Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role.