George F. Kennan

“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.”

“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.”

“Heroism is the sense of behaving honorably in a world where honor may not matter.”

“Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us.”

“For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.”

“The best thing we can do if we want to encourage domestic development in other countries is to make the best of our own.”

“The thoughtful observer of Russian-American relations will find no cause for complaint in the Kremlin's taciturn, cautious, suspicious nature.”

“This whole tendency to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable.”

“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.”

“We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity.”

“The very concept of history implies the scholarly contemplation of the past from a point in the present.”

“It is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is his enemy; for if he reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of his conduct he is bound eventually to be right.”

“The pursuit of total security bears with it the seed of its own destruction.”

“The truth is that the only real guarantee against the nuclear bomb is to get rid of it.”

“If you've got a big mouth and you're controversial, you're going to get attention.”

“The greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.”