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

— Dean Acheson Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969)

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Government

More quotes by Dean Acheson

How could the USA champion individual freedom in the world generally while denying it to an important minority in its own country.

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

Vietnam was worse than immoral — it was a mistake.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull. This is not always easy to achieve.

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.

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Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Dean Acheson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.