“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.”
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Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American politician and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. secretary of state, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman's main foreign policy advisor from 1945 to 1947 during early years of the Cold War. Acheson helped design the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.…
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politics · American politician and lawyer (1893–1971) · politician · diplomat · lawyer · also Dean Acheson, Dean Gooderham Acheson, Acheson
Born 11 April 1893 · Died 12 October 1971 · Q214758
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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...
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2026· 21 entries
“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.”
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“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.”
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“… the situation was still too delicate for complete candor and the ultimate truth too unformed for statement.”
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“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.”
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“The best environment for diplomacy is found where mutual confidence between governments exists...”
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“The conclusion was...unpalatable to believers in American omnipotence, to whom every goal unattained is explicable only by incompetence or treason.”
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“… talk should precede, not follow, the issuance of orders.”
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“The simple truth is that perseverance in good policies is the only avenue to success...”
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“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.”
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“Force can overcome force, but a free society cannot long steel itself to dominate another people by sheer force.”
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“...old inhabitants of the bureaucratic jungle like (Secretary) Hull knew that Cabinet boards and committees were paper tigers. They made a fine show in a parade but soon dissolved in the rain...After attend a few meetings (of this board), the Secretary deputized me to 'explain his absence' and substitute for him. Not all the arts of diplomacy are learned solely in its practice. There are other exercise yards.”
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“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...”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“Throughout the Near East lay rare tinder for anti-Western propaganda: a Moslem culture and history, bitter Arab nationalism galled by Jewish immigration under British protection and with massive American financial support, the remnants of a colonial status, and a sense of grievance that a vast natural resource was being extracted by foreigners under arrangements thought unfair to those living on the surface. This tinder could be, and was, lighted everywhere...”
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“I was a frustrated schoolteacher, persisting against overwhelming evidence to the contrary in the belief that the human mind could be moved by facts and reason.”
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“The position of the United States had undergone a drastic change; the purpose and capabilities of the State Department had not.”
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“tell a tale of large conceptions, great achievements...Its hero is the American people.”
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Mint: Quote of the Day by ex-US Sec of State Dean Acheson – ‘Negotiation in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties…’
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2025· 2 entries
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Dean Acheson Calls Israel ‘inflexible’ on Problem of Arab Refugees
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insider.si.edu: Dean Acheson : a life in the Cold War / Robert L. Beisner
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1971· 4 entries
Died 1971-10-12.
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“Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role.”
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“Vietnam was worse than immoral — it was a mistake.”
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“A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.”
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1970· 2 entries
Awarded Pulitzer Prize for History (1970).
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Won the Pulitzer Prize for History for his memoirs of his tenure in the State Department, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department
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1964· 2 entries
Won Presidential Medal of Freedom presented by Lyndon B. Johnson (1964).
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Acheson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, with Distinction
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1953· 1 entry
The last day of the Truman administration, and served on Yale's governing board along with Senator Robert A
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1951· 1 entry
That "the days of easy and automatic relations with the United States are over'
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1950· 1 entry
Before the National Press Club did not mention the Korea Peninsula and Formosa (Taiwan) as part of the all-important "defense perimeter" of the United States, known as the Acheson Line
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1949· 1 entry
Career landmark: United States Secretary of State (1949–1953).
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1947· 3 entries
Acheson received the Medal for Merit from President Truman
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Won Medal for Merit (1947).
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“s 1947 request to Congress for aid to Greece and Turkey, a speech which stressed the dangers of totalitarianism (but did not name the Soviet Union) and marked the fundamental change in American foreign policy that became known as the Truman Doctrine. On June 30, 1947, Acheson received the Medal for Merit from President Truman. The White Paper Defense During the summer of 1949, after the unexpected Democratic victory in the 1948 elections did not quiet the question”
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1946· 1 entry
As chairman of a special committee to prepare a plan for the international control of atomic energy, he wrote the Acheson–Lilienthal report
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1944· 1 entry
Acheson attended the Bretton Woods Conference as the head delegate from the State Department
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1941· 1 entry
Acheson implemented much of Roosevelt's economic policy of aiding Great Britain and harming the Axis powers
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1917· 1 entry
While serving in the National Guard, Acheson married Alice Caroline Stanley (August 12, 1895 – January 20, 1996)
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1911· 1 entry
Upon graduating from Groton and prior to entering Yale, he obtained a summer job with a work crew on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway through family connections; during this period, his co-workers instilled in him "a pric
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1893· 1 entry
Born 1893-04-11.
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