George Kennan on the false "good vs. evil" narrative

In this day of another great political-emotional preoccupation, when the image of the Soviet Union leaders has replaced that of Hitler in so many Western minds as the center and source of all possible evil, it is perhaps particularly desirable that we should remember these things.  Let us not repeat the mistake of believing that either good or evil is total.  Let us beware, in future, of wholly condemning an entire people and wholly exculpating others.  Let us remember that the great moral issues, on which civilization is going to stand or fall, cut across all military and indeological borders, across peoples, classes, and regimes - across, in fact, the make-up of the human individual himself.  No other people, as a whole, is entirely our enemy.  No people at all - not even ourselves - is entirely our friend.

~ George Kennan, Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin, Chapter 23: "Russia and the West as Allies," p. 369

1961