George F. Kennan

“One sometimes feels a guest of one's time and not a member of its household.”

“The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian.”

“The accords were fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship.”

“The truth is sometimes a poor competitor in the market place of ideas – complicated, unsatisfying, full of dilemmas, always vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse.”

“Heroism is endurance for one moment more.”

“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.”

“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.”