George F. Kennan Quotes

George F. Kennan — American Historian born on February 16, 1904, died on March 17, 2005

George Frost Kennan was an American diplomat, political scientist, 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"... (wikipedia)

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.

Heroism is endurance for one moment more.

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

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

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 Quotes

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