Quotes from Dean Acheson

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

Controversial proposals, once accepted, soon become hallowed.

The great corrupter of public men is the ego - corrupter because distracter. Wealth, sensuality, power cannot hold a candle to it. Looking in the mirror distracts one's attention from the problem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Force can overcome force, but a free society cannot long steel itself to dominate another people by sheer force.

Throughout the Near East lay rare tinder for anti-Western propaganda: a Moslem culture and history, bitter Arab nationalism galled by Jewish immigration under British protection and with massive American financial support, the remnants of a colonial status, and a sense of grievance that a vast natural resource was being extracted by foreigners under arrangements thought unfair to those living on the surface. This tinder could be, and was, lighted everywhere...

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.

Unfortunately, the hyperbole of the inaugural outran the provisions of the budget.

Not all the arts of diplomacy are learned solely in its practice. There are other exercise yards.

I soon discovered that the greater part of a day in Old State was devoted to meetings. Where the boundaries of jurisdiction were fuzzy or overlapping, meetings became inevitable. Most questions affected a number of functional and geographic divisions...These meetings gave the illusion of action, but often frustrated it by attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. What was most often needed was not compromise but decision.

The future comes one day at a time.

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

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

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.

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.

Adlai has a third rate mind that he can't make up.

Vietnam was worse than immoral — it was a mistake.

He was succeeding admirably in communicating his own boredom to his audience.