Quotes from George F. Kennan

Public opinion, or what passes for public opinion, is not invariably a moderating force in the jungle of politics.

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.

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

There is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant or unpromising objectives.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.

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

A war regarded as inevitable or even probable, and therefore much prepared for, has a very good chance of eventually being fought.

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

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 shock to the American economy.

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 hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

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

Instruments of coercion, once created, have a tendency to find their own natural masters.

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.

It would be useful to the Western world to realize that despite all the vicissitudes by which Russia has been afflicted since August 1939, the men in the Kremlin have never abandoned their faith in that program of territorial and political expansion which had once commended itself so strongly to Tsarist diplomatists." [519]

War has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. You know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end

In the fabric of human events, one thing leads to another. Every mistake is in a sense the product of all the mistakes that have gone before it, from which fact it derives a sort of cosmic forgiveness; and at the same time every mistake is in a sense the determinant of all the mistakes of the future, from which it derives a sort of cosmic unforgiveableness.

The varieties of skullduggery which make up the repertoire of the totalitarian government are just about as unlimited as human ingenuity itself, and just about as unpleasant. For, as you know, no holds are barred. There are no rules of the game. They can do anything that they think is in their interests.