Quotes by George F. Kennan

About George F. Kennan:

George Frost Kennan was 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".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The best an American can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow and where few will consent to believe he has been.

George F. Kennan

The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian.

George F. Kennan

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.

George F. Kennan

The accords were fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship.

George F. Kennan

We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hamper...

George F. Kennan

The truth is sometimes a poor competitor in the market place of ideas – complicated, unsatisfying, full of dilemmas, always vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse.

George F. Kennan

You have no idea how much it contributes to the general politeness and pleasantness of diplomacy when you have a little quiet armed force in the background

George F. Kennan

Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable sh...

George F. Kennan

One sometimes feels a guest of one's time and not a member of its household.

George F. Kennan

Heroism is endurance for one moment more.

George F. Kennan

Author Bio

  • NameGeorge F. Kennan
  • DescriptionAmerican advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian
  • BornFebruary 16, 1904
  • DiedMarch 17, 2005
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionDiplomat; Historian; Ambassador; Geopolitician; Political Scientist; Writer
  • AwardsPulitzer Prize For History; Presidential Medal Of Freedom; Order Of Merit For Arts And Science; Pulitzer Prize For Biography Or Autobiography; National Book Award For Nonfiction; Bancroft Prize; Francis Parkman Prize; National Book Award; Four Freedoms Award - Freedom From Fear; Pacem In Terris Award