“Plainly plenty of work was waiting to be done. The question was: would the State Department do it? I proposed to have a shot at finding out.”

— Dean Acheson, book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Plainly plenty of work was waiting to be done. The question was: would the State Department do it? I proposed to have a…" by Dean Acheson?

Dean Acheson49

Statesman and lawyer 1893–1971

Related quotes

“What do you want to have me shot for, Semyon Mikhailovich? If you don't find me suitable as chief of the operations department, then give me a combat division. I am a commander; I can command a division. But what would be the advantage of having me shot?”

Hovhannes Bagramyan (1897–1982) Soviet military commander

To Semyon Mikhailovich. Quoted in "Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev" - Page 322 - by Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev - Heads of state - 2007

“The average man won't really do a day's work unless he is caught and cannot get out of it. There is plenty of work to do if people would do it.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Quoted in The Zanesville Sunday Times-Signal [Zanesville, Ohio] (15 March 1931): On reasons for the Great Depression

“Nothing would be done at all, if a man waited till he could do it so well, that no one could find fault with it.”

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal

Lecture IX
Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England (1851)

“If we do not depart from God, and disunite by that departure, and fall into disunion among ourselves, I am confident, we doing our duty and waiting upon the Lord, we shall find He will be as a wall of brass round about us till we have finished that work which he has for us to do.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

Speech to his army officers (23 March 1649)

“I want to be clear: The United States of America has done what we said we would do.
That’s not to say that our work is complete.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Address on interventions in Libya (March 2011)

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

To vary that old, old saying a little bit — I married no planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone company!
Amanda, Scene Six
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“All of my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and of course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of servants. But man proposes — and woman accepts the proposal! — To vary that old, old saying a little bit — I married no planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone company!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Six
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

“I have read with very great interest Mr. Metcalfe's paper, as we at the Midvale Steel Co. have had the experience, during the past ten years, of organizing a system very similar to that of Mr. Metcalfe. The chief idea in our system, as in his, is, that the authority for doing all kinds of work should proceed from one central office to the various departments, and that there proper records should be kept of the work and reports made daily to the central office, so that the superintending department should be kept thoroughly informed as to what is taking place throughout the works, and at the same time no work could be done in the works without proper authority. The details of the system have been very largely modified as time went on, and a consecutive plan, such as Mr. Metcalfe proposed, would have been of great assistance to us in carrying out our system. There are certain points, however, in Mr. Metcalfe's plan, which I think our experience shows to be somewhat objectionable. He issues to each of the men a book, something like a check-book, containing sheets which they tear out, and return to the office after stating on them the work which they have done. We have found that any record which passes through the average workman's hands, and which he holds for any length of time, is apt either to be soiled or torn. We have, therefore, adopted the system of having our orders sent from the central office to the small offices in the various departments of the works, in each of which there is a clerk who takes charge of all orders received from, and records returned to, the central office, as well as of all records kept in the department.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

F.W. Taylor (1886), " Comment to "The Shop-Order System of Accounts https://archive.org/stream/transactionsof07amer#page/475/mode/1up," by Henry Metcalfe in: Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Vol 7 (1885-1886), p. 475; Partly cited in: Charles D. Wrege, ‎Ronald G. Greenwood (1991), Frederick W. Taylor, the father of scientific management. p. 204.

“There is plenty of work for love to do.”

Alexander McCall Smith book Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

Source: Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

“One day work is hard, and another day it is easy; but if I had waited for inspiration I am afraid I should have done nothing. The miner does not sit at the top of the shaft waiting for the coal to come bubbling up to the surface. One must go deep down, and work out every vein carefully.”

Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) English composer of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

Untitled essay, reprinted in Arthur Lawrence Sir Arthur Sullivan: Life-story, Letters and Reminiscences (London: James Bowden, 1899) p. 225.

“Plainly plenty of work was waiting to be done. The question was: would the State Department do it? I proposed to have a shot at finding out.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Dean Acheson49

Related quotes

Related topics