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Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.
Dean Acheson -
'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.'
Dean Acheson
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No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.
Dean Acheson -
I learned from the example of my father that the manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.
Dean Acheson -
I will undoubtedly have to seek what is happily known as gainful employment, which I am glad to say does not describe holding public office.
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 -
Not all the arts of diplomacy are learned solely in its practice. There are other exercise yards.'
Dean Acheson -
Acheson 'never for one moment believed that the holding of office was a source of power – it was an obligation of service.'
Dean Acheson
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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.'
Dean Acheson -
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
Dean Acheson -
In response, Acheson wrote to 'tell a tale of large conceptions, great achievements...Its hero is the American people.'
Dean Acheson -
Plainly plenty of work was waiting to be done. The question was: would the State Department do it? I proposed to have a shot at finding out.
Dean Acheson -
In the State Department, one never lacks for helpful suggestions.
Dean Acheson -
The most important aspect of the relationship between the president and the secretary of state is that they both understand who is president.
Dean Acheson
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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 -
a 'mixture of frustration and progress is the daily grind of foreign affairs.'
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 -
Negotiating in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.
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 -
Controversial proposals, once accepted, soon become hallowed.
Dean Acheson
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The manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.
Dean Acheson -
'… talk should precede, not follow, the issuance of orders.'
Dean Acheson -
'… the situation was still too delicate for complete candor and the ultimate truth too unformed for statement.'
Dean Acheson -
'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.'
Dean Acheson