Quotes by George Kennan

• 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.
• The accords were fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship.
• The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian.
• The best an American can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow and where few will consent to believe he has been.
• One sometimes feels a guest of one's time and not a member of its household.
• Heroism is endurance for one moment more.