7 Quotes & Sayings By George F Kennan

George F. Kennan (1904-2005) was a career foreign service officer who served as U.S. ambassador to the USSR during the early years of the Cold War. He is most famous for his Long Telegram, in which he called for a policy of containment of Soviet aggression in Europe and argued that the United States must actively oppose the spread of Communism Read more

Kennan was born in Wisconsin, but spent most of his life in Washington, D.C., where he died at age 101. His memoirs were published in 2005.

The truth is sometimes a poor competitor in the market...
1
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
2
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. George F. Kennan
3
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
4
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. George F. Kennan
5
Heroism is endurance for one moment more. George F. Kennan
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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