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

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

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."

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.