Dean Acheson Quotes

On the need to respond to the crisis in Greece, and broaching the subject of the Truman Doctrine ("it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.") with Congress: "In the past eighteen months, I said, Soviet pressure on the Straits, on Iran, and on northern Greece had brought the Balkans to the point where a highly possible Soviet breakthrough might open three continents to Soviet penetration. 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. These were the stakes that British withdrawal from the eastern Mediterranean offered to an eager and ruthless opponent."

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

President (Truman) observed (that) 'to asure the Arabs that they would be consulted (prior to official US recognition of Israel) was by no means inconsistent with my generally sympathetic attitudes toward Jewish aspirations.' The Arabs may be forgiven for believing that this did not exactly state the inconsistency as they saw 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.

The simple truth is that perseverance in good policies is the only avenue to success...

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

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

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull. This is not always easy to achieve.

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

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

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.

No change (Marshall replacing former SecDef. Louis Johnson, who, soon after he resigned, was diagnosed with a fatal "brain malady") could have been more welcome to me. It brought only one embarrassment. The General (Marshall) insisted, overruling every protest of mine, in meticulously observing the protocol involved in my being the senior Cabinet officer. Never would he go through a door before me, or walk anywhere but on my left; he would go around an automobile to enter it after me and sit on the left; in meetings he would insist on my speaking before him. To be treated so by a revered and beloved former chief was a harrowing experience. But the result in government was, I think, unique in the history of the Republic. For the first time and perhaps, though I am not sure, the last, the Secretaries of State and Defense, with their top advisors, met with the Chiefs of Staff in their map room and discussed common problems together. At one of these meetings General Bradley and I made a treaty, thereafter scrupulously observed. The phrases 'from a military point of view' and 'from a political point of view' were excluded from our talks. No such dichotomy existed. Each of us had our tactical and strategic problems, but they were interconnected, not separate.

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

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.

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