George F. Kennan
George F. Kennan
George Frost Kennanwas an American diplomat and historian. 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. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histories of the relations between USSR and the United States. He was also one of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth16 February 1904
CountryUnited States of America
George F. Kennan quotes about
strong war military
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.
war thoughtful iraq
War has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.
military war fighting
Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before ... In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.
war tools foreign-policy
War is a highly overrated tool of foreign policy.
change cold delay effect extremism general great hasten rather soviet war
The general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union,
fig leaves
The accords were fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship.
procedures figs democratic
Fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship.
perfect discipline recognition
Perfect discipline requires recognition of infallibility. Infallibility requires the observance of discipline.
character reality government
Forms of government are forged mainly in the fire of practice, not in the vacuum of theory. They respond to national character and to national realities.
judging tendencies relation
Above all, it behooves us to repress, and if possible to extinguish once and for all, our inveterate tendency to judge others by the extent to which they contrive to be like ourselves.
loss self judging
The Russian leaders are keen judges of human psychology, and as such they are highly conscious that loss of temper and of self-control is never a source of strength in political affairs.
russia understanding mind
Bearing all this in mind, we see that there is no Russian national understanding which would permit the early establishment in Russia of anything resembling the private enterprise system as we know it.
seductive childhood promise
I lived, particularly in childhood but with lessening intensity right on to middle age, in a world that was peculiarly and intimately my own, scarcely to be shared with others or even made plausible to them. I habitually read special meanings into things, scenes and places qualities of wonder, beauty, promise, or horror for which there was no external evidence visible or plausible to others. My world was peopled with mysteries, seductive hints, vague menaces, "intimations of immortality.
morning clever sleep
Russia, Russia unwashed, backward, appealing Russia, so ashamed of your own backwardness, so orientally determined to conceal it from us by clever deceit. So sensitive and so suspicious in the face of the wicked, civilized west. I shall always remember you slyly, touchingly, but with great shouting and confusion pumping hot water into our sleeping car in the frosty darkness of a December morning in order that we might not know, in order that we might never realize, to how primitive a land we had come.