Henry L. Stimson Quotes

We had news this morning of another successful atomic bomb being dropped on Nagasaki. These two heavy blows have fallen in quick succession upon the Japanese and there will be quite a little space before we intend to drop another.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Gentlemen don't read each other's mail.

When the news first came that Japan had attacked us my first feeling was of relief that ... a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people. This continued to be my dominant feeling in spite of the news of catastrophes which quickly developed.

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.

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.

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

Now the thing is not to get into unnecessary quarrels by talking too much and not to indicate any weakness by talking too much; let our actions speak for themselves.

The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.

When all the arguments have been forgotten, this central fact will remain. The two nations fought a single war, and their quarrels were the quarrels of brothers.

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.

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.

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.

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

Hope is the mainspring of life.

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.

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

The only deadly sin I know is cynicism.

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

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