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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.

George F. Kennan

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George F. Kennan
Age: 101 †
Born: 1904
Born: February 16
Died: 2005
Died: March 17
Diplomat
Geopolitician
Historian
Political Scientist
Politician
University Teacher
Writer
Milwaukee City
Wisconsin
George Frost Kennan
George Kennan
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Went
Momentum
Like
President
Intentions
War
Carries
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Carrie
Ends
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Today
Intention
Going
Iraq
Never
Begin

More quotes by George F. Kennan

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Like a graceful vase, a cat, even when motionless, seems to flow.
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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
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The jealous and intolerant eye of the Kremlin can distinguish, in the end, only vassals and enemies, and the neighbors of Russia, if they do not wish to be one, must reconcile themselves to being the other.
George F. Kennan
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Perfect discipline requires recognition of infallibility. Infallibility requires the observance of discipline.
George F. Kennan
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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.
George F. Kennan
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Forms of government are forged mainly in the fire of practice, not in the vacuum of theory. They respond to national character and to national realities.
George F. Kennan
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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.
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The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian.
George F. Kennan
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Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith - a desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will - but faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world - faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity.
George F. Kennan
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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.
George F. Kennan
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Russia, Russia - unwashed, backward, appealing Russia, so ashamed of your own backwardness, so orientally determined to conceal it from us by clever deceit.
George F. Kennan
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Whenever you have a possibility of going in two ways, either for peace or for war, for peaceful methods of for military methods, in the present age there is a strong prejudice for the peaceful ones. War seldom ever leads to good results.
George F. Kennan
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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.
George F. Kennan
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It is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.
George F. Kennan
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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.
George F. Kennan
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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?
George F. Kennan
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War is a highly overrated tool of foreign policy.
George F. Kennan
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The nuclear bomb is the most useless weapon ever invented. It can be employed to no rational purpose. It is not even an effective defense against itself.
George F. Kennan