List of George F. Kennan Quotes

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.

Fig Leaves Of Democratic Procedure To Hide The Nakedness Of Stalinist Dictatorship.

The Red Army... Swept The Native Population Clean In A Manner That Has No Parallel Since The Days Of The Asiatic Hordes.

A Guest Of One's Time And Not A Member Of The Household.

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.

Perfect Discipline Requires Recognition Of Infallibility. Infallibility Requires The Observance Of Discipline.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Like A Graceful Vase, A Cat, Even When Motionless, Seems To Flow.

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.