“We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brother’s keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and-for the Far East- 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.”
Kennan, PPS 23, February 24, 1948
“So numerous would be the ramifications of mounting Arab ill will, of opening the door to Soviet political or military penetration, and of generally chaotic conditions in Palestine and neighboring countries that the whole structure of peace and security in the Near East and Mediterranean would be directly or indirectly affected with results… injurious to US interests.”
Kennan, PPS 19, January 19, 1948.
“Our national experience is in most respects a unique one; and it is not only possible but something logically to be expected that the institutions flowing from that experience, and organically intertwined with it, should be largely irrelevant to the requirements of peoples whose national experience has been different.”
Kennan, “Report of South American Trip,” March 29, 1950.
“They obviosuly represent an extravagant and profoundly misconceived undertaking, in which the relationship of military result to the resources committed is absurdly uneconomical, and which suffers further from the fact that it flies in the face both of the sensibilities of the world public and of the moral conscience of our own.”
Kennan, discussing American bombing raids in Vietnam in a 1967 letter to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
“This is a time in our national life more serious, more menacing… than any I have ever experienced or ever hoped to experience.”
Kennan in 1968.
“To be clothed in blue uniforms, taught to eschew such things as love, sex, family feeling and humor in favor of proletarian enthusiasm, to do… physical jerks every morning, to sing… little regimented chants of hatred, and to espouse an indignant determination to see international questions settled by war and violence rather than- as in the views of the Russian traitors- by peaceful coexistence. In this, I gather, we disagree.”
Kennan in a 1966 response to David Horowitz.
“But if we try to conceal from our own people or from our allies the full measure of our misfortune, or permit ourselves to seek relief in any reactions of blunder or petulance or hysteria, we can easily find this crisis resolving itself into an irreparable deterioration of our world position- and of our confidence in ourselves.”
Kennan, in a letter to Secretary of State Dean Acheson, December 1950
“This society bears the seeds of its own horrors- unbreathable air, undrinkable water, starvation- and until people realize that we have to get to a much simpler way of life, a much smaller population, a society in which the agrarian component is far greater in relation to the urban component- until these appreciations become widespread and effective- I can see no answer to the troubles of our time.”
Kennan in 1979.
“People like myself can[not] view this [student unrest] from some sort of smug Olympian detachment, as though it were not our responsibility, as though it were not in part our own ugly and decadent face that we see in this distorted mirror.”
Kennan in his 1968 book Democracy and the Student Left
“American policy remains the work not just of dillettantes but rather of great masses of them, milling around, debating and disputing within the framework of a bureaucracy too confused for thought and too ponderous for action.”
Kennan, in an unused excerpt from his Memoirs.