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George F. Kennan Quotes
1904–2005 United States
George Frost Kennan (16 February 1904 – 17 March 2005) was an American diplomat and historian, who served as ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. He was known best as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War on which he later reversed himself.
United States Historians Non-fiction authors Philosophers Political scientists Also known as: George Frost Kennan, George Kennan, Kennan, George F.
Random George F. Kennan quote
29 quotes
Reading, in contrast to sitting before the screen, is not a purely passive exercise.
For the love of God, for the love of your children and of the civilization to which you belong, cease this madness.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Vol. 37 (1981)
Although the Georgian nationalists do not like Stalin, they have every reason to be thankful to him.
World communism is like a malignant parasite which feeds only on diseased tissue.
I have never been any good at training children or dogs; that is why I am no good at training myself.
A political society does not live to conduct foreign policy; it would be more correct to say that it conducts foreign policy in order to live.
A guest of one's time and not a member of its household.
Whenever you have a possibility of going in two ways, either for peace or for war, for peaceful methods of for military methods, in the present age there is a strong prejudice for the peaceful ones. War seldom ever leads to good results.
Fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship.
Trotsky, and all that Trotsky represented, was Stalin's real fear.
And there is a real question as to whether "bigness" in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name.
Around the Cragged Hill : A Personal and Political Philosophy (1994)
A doctrine is something that pins you down to a given mode of conduct and dozens of situations which you cannot foresee, which is a great mistake in principle.
A foreign policy aimed at the achievement of total security is the one thing I can think of that is entirely capable of bringing this country to a point where it will have no security at all.
The very concept of history implies the scholar and the reader. Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning.
The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian.
By this I mean that a political society does not live to conduct foreign policy; it would be more correct to say that it conducts foreign policy in order to live.
A democracy is peace-loving. It does not like to go to war. It is slow to rise to provocation. When it has once been provoked to the point where it must grasp the sword, it does not easily forgive its adversary for having produced this situation.
American Diplomacy (1951)
If humiliation and rejection are to be the rewards of faithful and effective service in this field, what are those of us to conclude who have also served prominently in this line of work but upon whom this badge has not yet been conferred?
We are, if territory and population be looked at together, one of the great countries of the world — a monster country, one might say, along with others such as China, India, the recent Soviet Union, and Brazil. And there is a real question as to whether "bigness" in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name.
Around the Cragged Hill : A Personal and Political Philosophy (1994)
I am like a person who has placed poison in one of two glasses before a person he loves—and looks back upon his act with horror and incredulity—but still does not know from which glass the person will drink.
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