Dean Acheson - State Quotes

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In the State Department, one never lacks for helpful suggestions.

Dean Acheson
Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role.
, 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
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
I did not share President's view on the Palestine solution... The number that could be absorbed by Arab Palestine without creating a grave political problem would be inadequate, and to transform the country into a Jewish state capable of receiving a million or more immigrants would vastly exacerbate the political problem and imperil not only American but all Western influence in the Near East.

Dean Acheson
General Marshall was "impatient with a type of nonsense particularly prevalent in the State Department known as 'kicking the problem around.' All of us who have work with General Marshall have reported a recurring outburst of his: 'Don't fight the problem, gentlemen, solve it!' With him the time to be devoted to analysis of a problem, to balancing 'on the one hand' against 'on the other hand,' was definitely limited. The discussion he wanted was about plans of action "

Dean Acheson
President (Truman) observed (that) 'to assure 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
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
My official duties were summed up in the Department of State Bulletin by misleading platitudes... Both (Secretary) Hull and the President... knew me and, surely, had not asked me into the Department to perform the largely nonexistent duties defined in the Bulletin.

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

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