Thirteen Days (2000)

Len Cariou: Dean Acheson

Quotes 

• Dean Acheson : Gentlemen, for the last fifteen years, I've fought at this table alongside your predecessors in the struggle against the Soviet. Now I do not wish to seem melodramatic, but I do wish to impress upon you a lesson I learned with bitter tears and great sacrifice. The Soviet understands only one language: action. Respects only one word: force.

• President Kennedy : Dean, how does this all play out?

  Dean Acheson : Your first step sir, will be to demand that the Soviet withdraw the missiles within 12 to 24 hours. They will refuse. When they do you will order the strikes, followed by the invasion. They will resist and be overrun. They will retaliate against another target somewhere else in the world, most likely Berlin. We will honor our treaty commitments and resist them there, defeating them per our plans.

  President Kennedy : Those plans call for the use of nuclear weapons. So what is the next step?

  Dean Acheson : Hopefully cooler heads will prevail before we reach the next step.

• Dean Acheson : Let's hope appeasement doesn't run in families. I fear weakness does.

• Robert Kennedy : No, no, no! Now, there is more than one option here - and if one isn't occurring to us, it's because we haven't thought hard enough!

  John McCone, CIA Director : Bobby, sometimes there is only one right choice, and you thank God when it's so clear.

  Robert Kennedy : You're talking about a sneak attack. How will that make us look? A big country blasting a little one into the stone age. Yeah, we'll be everyone's favorites.

  Dean Acheson : Come on Bobby, that's naive. This is the real world. You know that better than anybody.

  John McCone, CIA Director : And you weren't so ethically particular when we were talking about options for removing Castro over at CIA.