Dean Acheson quotes - page 2

Dean Acheson was an American statesman and diplomat who served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Harry S. Truman. A key architect of the post-World War II international order, he played a central role in shaping U.S. foreign policy during the early Cold War, including the creation of NATO. He influenced major global events and strategies that defined the mid-20th century. Here are 60 of his quotes:

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.

Dean Acheson

The best environment for diplomacy is found where mutual confidence between governments exists...

Dean Acheson

The heads of these divisions, like barons in a feudal system weakened at the top by mutual suspicion and jealousy between king and prince, were constantly at odds if not at war...For the most part the barons were knowledgeable people performing in a way the times had completely outdated, a fact of which they were quite unaware.

Dean Acheson

The experiences of the years...have brought the country, particularly its young people, to a mood of depression, disillusion, and withdrawal from the effort to affect the world.

Dean Acheson

... talk should precede, not follow, the issuance of orders.

Dean Acheson

There is perhaps nothing more important in the world today than the steadiness and consistency of the foreign policy of this Republic. Too much depends on the United States for us to indulge in the luxury of either undue pessimism or premature optimism.

Dean Acheson

147, on the situation in Greece: "imminent collapse due to mounting guerrilla activity, supplied and directed from outside, economic chaos, and the Greek governmental inability to meet the crisis."

Dean Acheson

President Truman used to say that budget figures revealed far more of proposed policy than speeches.

Dean Acheson

If I have said nothing new tonight, it may well be because, in a family of nations as in families of individuals we should expect nothing more sensational than growth.

Dean Acheson

... the situation was still too delicate for complete candor and the ultimate truth too unformed for statement.

Dean Acheson

...old inhabitants of the bureaucratic jungle like (Secretary) Hull knew that Cabinet boards and committees were paper tigers. They made a fine show in a parade but soon dissolved in the rain...After attend a few meetings (of this board), the Secretary deputized me to 'explain his absence' and substitute for him.

Dean Acheson

I am willing to join in your statement on the ground that I feel about the future of the United States whenever the President starts out on his travels the way the Marshal of the Supreme Court does when he opens a session of that Court. You will recall that he ends up his liturgy by saying "God save the United States for the Court is now sitting.

Dean Acheson

a "mixture of frustration and progress is the daily grind of foreign affairs."

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

On the France's Indochina involvement: "They were engaged in the most dangerous of all activities – deceiving themselves...France was engaged in a task beyond her strength, indeed, beyond the strength of any external power unless it was acting in support of the dominant local will and purpose."

Dean Acheson

The position of the United States had undergone a drastic change; the purpose and capabilities of the State Department had not.

Dean Acheson

Only immediate assertion of leadership by the United States could prevent war in the next decade...The President and the Secretary of State must shock the country into a realization of its peril...

Dean Acheson

The qualities which produce the dogged, unbeatable courage of the British, personified at the time by Winston Churchill, can appear in other settings as stubbornness bordering on stupidity.

Dean Acheson

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

Dean Acheson

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.

Dean Acheson

...the Assistant Secretary in Charge of Administration (was) a job which should be undertaken only by a saint or a fool...the House and Senate subcommittees in charge of appropriations, their chairmen, and the Comptroller General's office make this job a perfect hell. Like an ill-tempered chatelaine of a medieval manor, her keys hanging from her belt, Congress parsimoniously and suspiciously doles out supplies for the shortest time, each item meticulously weighed and measured, each request at first harshly denied. Almost simultaneously yesterday's accounting goes on amid screamed accusation and denunciation of every purpose of policy."

Dean Acheson

Among the roles the Budget Bureau (now OMB) was that of constant critic and improver of administration in the federal executive branch. In my day this work had fallen to the products of graduate schools in civil administration. Their ideas...seemed to me theoretical nonsense.

Dean Acheson