Quotes by George F. Kennan

George F. Kennan

…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.

Men

People

Two

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.

Doctrine

Mistake

Principles

A foreign policy aimed at the achievement of total security is the one thing I can think of that is entirely capable of bringing this country to a point where it will have no security at all.

Achievement

Country

Thinking

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

Guests

Members

Time

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.

Doe

Order

Political

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.

Judging

Relation

Tendencies

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.

Healthy

Inability

Weakness

Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before. In other words, 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.

Fighting

Military

War

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.

Mind

Russia

Understanding

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?

Atheism

People

Secret

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Achievement

Adoption

Age

America

Animal

Army

Atheism

Believe

Best Things

Cat

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Childhood

Christian

Civilization

Clever

Coercion

Communication

Communism

Countries Of The World

Country

Deceit

Defense

Democratic

Discipline

Doctrine

Doe

Elephants

Endurance

Enemy

Eye

Eyebrows

Fighting

Figs

Fire

Force

Foreign Policy

Generations

Government

Guests

Healthy

Hero

Historical

Humanity

Humility

Ideas

Inability

Iraq

Jealous

Judging

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Quotes by George F. Kennan

George F. Kennan

A foreign policy aimed at the achievement of total security is the one thing I can think of that is entirely capable of bringing this country to a point where it will have no security at all.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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