Quotes Library

April 25, 2025

Government…is simply not the channel through which men’s noblest impulses are to be realized. Its task, on the contrary, is largely to see to it that the ignoble ones are kept under restraint and not permitted to go too far.

George Kennan (1904–2005), American diplomat, historian. Around the Cragged Hill (1993), Jay p.203

Did you come to elective office to do good, or to do well? Have you sacrificed the former in the interest of the latter? Do you think Kennan read The Federalist as a student?

If you want to pursue a noble human impulse, join the NGO of your choice. *non-government organization.


More Quotes

October 10, 2025
All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.
October 17, 2025
[When asked what he had done during the French Revolution] I survived.
July 5, 2025
There is but one way for a newspaperman to look at a politician, and that is down.
Page 46 of 122