"Bohlen and Isaiah Berlin came to dinner, and we talked until one or two in the morning. Berlin, who is undoubtedly the best informed and most intelligent foreigner in Moscow, said that the only thins he had learned on the occasion of this visit were: (a) the continued existence of the conflict in outlook between age and youth, (b) of the tremendous importance to young people of the feeling of economic security which they have under the Soviet system, and (c) the continued vital importance of Marxist dogma in Soviet thought and action. He agreed with me strongly that American policy must find its expression from now on in action and not in words if it is to do any good. He was firmly convinced that the Russians view a conflict with the Western world as quite inevitable and that their whole policy is predicated on this prospect. I asked him whether they didn't realize that if the conflict came it would be the result of their own tactics and their own insistence that it was inevitable. he said no, that they would view it as inevitable through the logic of the development of social forces. They would say that possibly some of us foreign diplomats and statesmen might consider ourselves friendly to Russia at the moment but that eventually we would find out that we were hostile to them even though we did not know it at the moment."
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Jews from the United KingdomAgnosticsPhilosophers from the United KingdomHistorians from the United KingdomPeople from Riga
Original Language: English
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George F. Kennan, entry of 17 December 1945, in The Kennan Diaries (2014) edited by Frank Costigliola
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin
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Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Russian-British political philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading liberal thinkers of the 20th century.
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