John Foster Dulles
11 quotes
Biography
John Foster Dulles was an American politician, lawyer, and diplomat who served as United States secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 until his resignation in 1959.
"The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year."
"You have to take chances for peace, just as you must take chances in war. Some say that we were brought to the verge of war. Of course we were brought to the verge of war. The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost. We’ve had to look it square in the face—on the question of enlarging the Korean war, on the question of getting into the Indochina war, on the question of Formosa. We walked to the brink and we looked it in the face."
"We have reconfirmed the unity and firmness of our position, the position expressed in the Joint Communique of the four powers at Paris on December 14th. We do not accept any substitution of East Germans for the Soviet Union in its responsibilities toward Berlin and its obligations to us. We are resolved that our position in, and access to, West Berlin shall be preserved."
"The principle of Neutrality pretends that a nation can best gain safety for itself by being indifferent to the fate of others. This has increasingly become an obsolete conception, and, except under very exceptional circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception. The free world today is stronger and peace is more secure because so many free nations courageously recognize the now-demonstrated fact that their own peace and safety would be endangered by assault on freedom elsewhere."
"Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence."
"I wouldn't attach too much importance to these student riots. I remember when I was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris, I used to go out and riot occasionally."
"Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which we usually reserve for war."
"Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which we usually reserve for war."
"If you are scared to go to the brink you are lost."
"The principle of neutrality ... has increasingly become an obsolete conception and except under very special circumstances it is an immoral and shortsighted conception."
"The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities."