Elliot Richardson Quotes

The experience of learning how to get straight to the core of a problem proved to be of immense value later when I had a long succession of responsibilities in large, complex government departments.

My most important task must be an attempt to bring the monster under democratic direction and control.

If the large power voluntarily abstains from using its full power or feels the strategic situation to be such that it cannot do so, it in effect loses the advantage of being a big power.

If there are flaws they are in ourselves, and our task therefore must be one not of redesign but of renewal and reaffirmation, especially of the standards in which all of us believe.

It often seemed like we had become a nation where the only heroes were rock singers and ball players and that there were no large men of probity who could be called upon for the task.

They've got him - credible witnesses, documents, heaven knows what else. In all my years as a prosecutor I have never seen such an open-and-shut case.

The Watergate reforms did work well for many years, and if improved and broadened, these reforms can have real and major impact on the system today.

The idea of being in the State Department was exciting. On the other hand, I always had in the back of my mind going into politics. If I stayed in Washington, I might end up a government hack.

But tending machinery was one thing; defining what we were trying to do and why we were doing it, and developing ways to measure how well the job was done - this was something else again.

I thought I was going to be killed. The casualties were so heavy, it was just a given. I learned to take each day, each mission, as it came. That's an attitude I've carried into my professional life. I take each case, each job, as it comes.

I had come to regard the U.S. Senate's rejection of the League of Nations as a tragic mistake.