Top 15 Dean Acheson Quotes

Acheson "never for one moment believed that the holding of office was a source of power – it was an obligation of service."

Acheson's State Department "comrades...played a vital role in setting the main lines of American foreign policy for many years to come and...they may feel in their hearts that it was nobly done."

To State Department employees: "Yours is not an easy task nor one which is much appreciated. You don't ask much of your fellow citizens, and if any of you are so inexperienced that you ever do, you will receive very little. Certainly not much in the form of material recompense; certainly not much in the form of appreciation for your work, because you are dealing with matters which, though they affect life of every citizen of this country intimately, do it in ways which it is not easy for every citizen to understand. And so you are dealing in a field which I called the other day a field of 'alien knowledge,' which seems strange to many of your fellow citizens … We have a tradition in this country of skepticism about government, of looking at it very carefully, of seeing whether our public servants can take it. That isn't always comfortable, but, on the whole, it is good. Any time when there are governments in the world which are crushing the liberties of their citizens, it is good that in this great country people look with some skepticism upon government as such. That is one of our traditions … "

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.

My constant appeal to American liberals was to face the long, hard years and not to distract us with the offer of short cuts and easy solutions begotten by good will out of the angels of man's better nature...The road to freedom and peace is a hard one.

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

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.

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

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

It is a mistake to interpret too literally and sweepingly the poet's admonition that things are not what they seem. Sometimes they are, and it is often essential to survival to know when they are and when they are not.

The conclusion was...unpalatable to believers in American omnipotence, to whom every goal unattained is explicable only by incompetence or treason.

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

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.

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

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