Henry L. Stimson Quotes

The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him.

There has been growing quite a strain of irritating feeling between our government and the Russians and it seems to me that it is a time for me to use all the restraint I can on these other people who have been apparently getting a little more irritated.

Russia will occupy most of the good food lands of central Europe while we have the industrial portions. We must find some way of persuading Russia to play ball.

Hope is the mainspring of life.

The Japanese campaign involves therefore two great uncertainties; first, whether Russia will come in though we think that will be all right; and second, when and how S-1 will resolve itself.

I do not see how the Japanese can hold out against this united front.

History is often not what actually happened but what is recorded as such.

But I think the bomb instead constitutes merely a first step in a new control by man over the forces of nature too revolutionary and dangerous to fit into old concepts.

History knows no greater display of courage than that shown by the people of the Soviet Union.

Honor begets honor; trust begets trust; faith begets faith; and hope is the mainspring of life.

I told him there was one city that they must not bomb without my permission and that was Kyoto.

If you are going to try to go to war, or to prepare for war, in a capitalist country, you have got to let business make money out of the process or business won't work.

A private meeting with Hoover is like sitting in a both of ink.

As to the war with Japan, the President had already received my memorandum in general as to the possibility of getting a substantial unconditional surrender from Japan which I had written before leaving Washington and which he had approved.

We face the delicate question of the diplomatic fencing to be done so as to be sure Japan is put into the wrong and makes the first bad move ... The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot.

Gentlemen don't read each other's mail.

It seems as if everybody in the country was getting impatient to get his or her particular soldier out of the Army and to upset the carefully arranged system of points for retirement which we had arranged with the approval of the Army itself.

We debated long over the situation for it is a very difficult question and all of us recognize its difficulty.

We think it will be shortly afterwards, but it seems a terrible thing to gamble with such big stakes in diplomacy without having your master card in your hand.

I told him that my own opinion was that the time now and the method now to deal with Russia was to keep our mouths shut and let our actions speak for words.

The bomb and the entrance of the Russians into the war will certainly have an effect on hastening the victory.

I think it is very important that I should have a talk with you as soon as possible on a highly secret matter. I mentioned it to you shortly after you took office but have not urged it since on account of the pressure you have been under.

After I had gone through this matter with the President I told him of my condition of health and that my doctors felt that I must take a complete rest and that I thought that that meant leaving the Department finally in a short time.

Their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese.