George F. Kennan Quotes - Page 2

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• 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.

  George F. Kennan

  Order, Political, Doe

  "The Two Planes of International Reality". Lecture at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey on March 1954. "Realities of American Foreign Policy". Book by George F. Kennan, p. 4, 1954.

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• We should not lose ourselves in vainglorious sohemes for changing human nature all over the planet. Rather, we should learn to view ourselves with a sense of proportion and Christian humility before the enormous complexity of the world in which it has been given us to live.

  George F. Kennan

  Life, Christian, Humility

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• ...there is an optimal balance, depending on the manner of man's life, between the density of human population and the tolerances of nature. This balance, in the case of the United States would seem to me to have been surpassed when the American population reached, at a very maximum, two hundred million people, and perhaps a good deal less.

  George F. Kennan

  Men, Two, People

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• Fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship.

  George F. Kennan

  Figs, Procedures, Democratic

  Of postwar agreements to govern Eastern Europe. Quoted in Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas TheWise Men (1986).

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• Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith - a desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will - but faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world - faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity.

  George F. Kennan

  Writing, Historical, Endurance

  "Putting History at Risk". www.nytimes.com. May 27, 1984.

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• This is a big world. Billions - rapidly increasing billions - of people live outside our borders. Obviously, a great number of them, being much poorer than they think most of us are, look enviously over those borders and would like, if they could, to come here.

  George F. Kennan

  Thinking, Numbers, People

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• Actually, the inability of any society to resist immigration, the inability to find other solutions to the problem of employment at the lower, more physical, and menial levels of the economic process, is a serious weakness, and possibly even a fatal one, in any national society. The fully healthy society would find ways to meet those needs out of its own resources.

  George F. Kennan

  Healthy, Weakness, Inability

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• 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.

  George F. Kennan

  Morning, Clever, Sleep

  "George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy". Book by David Allan Mayers, p. 30, 1988.

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• 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.

  George F. Kennan

  Character, Reality, Fire

  George F. Kennan (2012). “American Diplomacy: Sixtieth-Anniversary Expanded Edition”, p.26, University of Chicago Press

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• 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.

  George F. Kennan

  Country, Real, Countries Of The World

  "Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy". Book by George F. Kennan, p. 143, 1993.

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• 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.

  George F. Kennan

  Strong, Military, War

  "George Kennan Speaks Out About Iraq". historynewsnetwork.org. August 08, 2005.

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• 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.

  George F. Kennan

  Judging, Tendencies, Relation

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• Do people ever reflect, one wonders, that the best way to protect against the penetration of one's secrets by others is to have the minimum of secrets to conceal?

  George F. Kennan

  People, Secret, Atheism

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• Like a graceful vase, a cat, even when motionless, seems to flow.

  George F. Kennan

  Cat, Animal, Humanity

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• 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.

  George F. Kennan

  War, Thoughtful, Iraq

  "George Kennan Speaks Out About Iraq". historynewsnetwork.org. August 08, 2005.

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• Perfect discipline requires recognition of infallibility. Infallibility requires the observance of discipline.

  George F. Kennan

  Discipline, Perfect, Recognition

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• The Red Army... swept the native population clean in a manner that has no parallel since the days of the Asiatic hordes.

  George F. Kennan

  Army, Population, Red

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• 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. When the word 'containment' was used in my 'X' article, it was used with relation to a certain situation then prevailing, and as a response to it.

  George F. Kennan

  Mistake, Principles, Doctrine

  "George Kennan Speaks Out About Iraq". historynewsnetwork.org. August 08, 2005.

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• 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.

  George F. Kennan

  Russia, Understanding, Mind

  George F. Kennan (2012). “American Diplomacy: Sixtieth-Anniversary Expanded Edition”, p.139, University of Chicago Press

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• 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.

  George F. Kennan

  Seductive, Childhood, Promise

  GEORGE F. KENNAN (1967). “MEMOIRS 1925-1950”

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• A guest of one's time and not a member of the household.

  George F. Kennan

  Time, Guests, Members

  Of the feeling of being viewed as a pragmatist. Quoted in Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas The WiseMen (1986).

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