Cold War Quotes

“On the black cotton was printed a white skull and crossbones - the skull head grinning as if he were mocking her. The nun struggled for her breath and wanted to drop the evil little banner, but her fingers wouldn't let go of it - making her stare into its horrid death face as if she were looking at her own end.”
― Victoria Dougherty, The Bone Church

“Vera had also hated lipstick, Marzipan and Lutherans - excluding her husband, but not her late mother-in-law. Most of all she hated being governed by anyone or anything.”
― Victoria Dougherty, The Bone Church

“I just wanted all the wars to be over so that we could spend the money on starships and Mars colonies.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human

“In this populist regime, everything belongs to the people. If everyone owned everything , then, of course, no one owned anything. So how could it be theft if no one owned it?”
― Rafael Polo, Growing Up American

“I want to follow your orders, but, I…I still work for military intelligence, and I need permission to travel out of my stationed area.”
― Karl Braungart, Counter Identity

“Well, here’s the shocker,” said Kirby. “Majors Miller and McKinsey believe our former Captain Paul Remmich is acting as a spy for the Iraqi government.”
― Karl Braungart, Counter Identity

“Wait a minute. What was that name you mentioned? Something about Allah?”
― Karl Braungart, Counter Identity

“Paul, tell him you need to talk to international security advisors. Briefly explain the army asked you to act as a temporary diplomat. You don’t have to give the details. Now, what are your calendar plans?”
― Karl Braungart, Counter Identity

“ “We think a spy scheme could be brewing with one or more of the Middle East scientists going to Los Alamos.”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity

“Here's my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose.”
― Ronald Reagan, U.S.S.R.-U.S.A. Summit, Moscow, May 29-June 2, 1988

“Let’s not forget—we already have a highly ranked officer secretly working for us at Patch Barracks, V Corps headquarters.”
― Karl Braungart, Lost Identity

“There is no monopoly of common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too
[...]
There's no such thing as a winnable war
It's a lie we don't believe anymore ..."

(The Russians)”
― Sting, The Dream of the Blue Turtles

“Anti-Americanism may indeed have grown fiercer than it was during the cold war. It is a common phenomenon that when the angels fail to deliver, the demons become more fearsome.”
― Ian Buruma, A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq

“Dear sirs,

The cold war isn’t over. When national borders fail, the epidermis is the last line of defense. We are counting on you.

Sincerely,

Patriot”
― Benson Bruno, A Story that Talks About Talking is Like Chatter to Chattering Teeth, and Every Set of Dentures can Attest to the Fact that No . . .

“Call no man lucky until he is dead, but there have been moment of rare satisfaction in the often random and fragmented life of the radical freelance scribbler. I have lived to see Ronald Reagan called “a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda” by his former idolators; to see the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union regarded with fear and suspicion by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (which blacked out an interview with Miloš Forman broadcast live on Moscow TV); to see Mao Zedong relegated like a despot of antiquity. I have also had the extraordinary pleasure of revisiting countries—Greece, Spain, Zimbabwe, and others—that were dictatorships or colonies when first I saw them. Other mini-Reichs have melted like dew, often bringing exiled and imprisoned friends blinking modestly and honorably into the glare. E pur si muove—it still moves, all right.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports

“Question: Which Mediterranean government shares all of Ronald Reagan's views on international terrorism, the present danger of Soviet advance, the hypocrisy of the United Nations, the unreliability of Europe, the perfidy of the Third World and the need for nuclear defense policy? Question: Which Mediterranean government is Ronald Reagan trying, with the help of George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger, to replace with a government led by a party which professes socialism and which contains extreme leftists?

If you answered 'the government of Israel' to both of the above, you know more about political and international irony than the President does.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“This country has not seen and probably will never know the true level of sacrifice of our veterans. As a civilian I owe an unpayable debt to all our military. Going forward let’s not send our servicemen and women off to war or conflict zones unless it is overwhelmingly justifiable and on moral high ground. The men of WWII were the greatest generation, perhaps Korea the forgotten, Vietnam the trampled, Cold War unsung and Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan vets underestimated. Every generation has proved itself to be worthy to stand up to the precedent of the greatest generation. Going back to the Revolution American soldiers have been the best in the world. Let’s all take a remembrance for all veterans who served or are serving, peace time or wartime and gone or still with us. 11/11/16 May God Bless America and All Veterans.”
― Thomas M Smith

“It is truth, in the old saying, that is 'the daughter of time,' and the lapse of half a century has not left us many of our illusions. Churchill tried and failed to preserve one empire. He failed to preserve his own empire, but succeeded in aggrandizing two much larger ones. He seems to have used crisis after crisis as an excuse to extend his own power. His petulant refusal to relinquish the leadership was the despair of postwar British Conservatives; in my opinion this refusal had to do with his yearning to accomplish something that 'history' had so far denied him—the winning of a democratic election.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

“And you know what happened next in my dream? Dick Cheney and I said the same thing at the same time: "Well, we had a Cold War to win." And then I screamed at him: "I KNEW you would say that! You ALWAYS say that!" But then, since Cheney and I made the same remark at the same time, I realized he owed me a Coke. So I said, "Jinx! You owe me a Coke!" And Vice-President Dick Cheney smiled sheepishly. *Shudder*... I don't even DRINK coke. I tastes like robot sweat.”
― David Rees, Get Your War On II

“What Nixon sought throughout the Cold War was a stable international order for a world filled with nuclear weapons.”
― Henry Kissinger, On China

“When I rose to the leadership of the USSR and looked into the situation of nuclear disarmament negotiations, I was baffled. Negotiations were taking place, diplomats and military officials were meeting regularly. They gave speeches to each other, hundreds of litres of beverages of various strengths were consumed at receptions, and meanwhile the arms race continued, arsenals increased and nuclear testing carried on. There was a terrible inertia, a vicious cycle it was impossible to escape. In the second half of the 1980s, the political leadership of both the USSR and the USA came to the realization that all of this could not go on indefinitely. I see here a parallel to the motto of perestroika: "We can no longer continue to live this way." Despite all the differences of opinion in my discussions on specific issues with Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz, we agreed that the nuclear arms race not only had to be stopped, it had to be reversed.”
― Mikhail Gorbachev, What Is at Stake Now: My Appeal for Peace and Freedom

“I find it difficult to say whether the leadership's 'second echelon' could have preserved the German Democratic Republic. Helmut Kohl later told me he had never believed that Egon Krenz was capable of getting the situation under control. I do not know — we are all wiser after the event, as the saying goes. For my part, I must admit I briefly had a faint hope that the new leaders would be able to change the course of events by establishing a new type of relations between the two German states — based on radical domestic reforms in East Germany.”
― Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs

“Having conditioned myself for a new political outlook, I could no longer accept in the old way the multi-colored, patchwork-quilt-like political map of Europe. The continent has known more than its share of wars and tears. It has had enough. Scanning the panorama of this long-suffering land and pondering on the common roots of such a multi-form but essentially common European civilization, I felt with growing acuteness the artificiality and temporariness of the bloc-to-bloc confrontation and the archaic nature of the "iron curtain." That was probably how the idea of a common European home came to my mind, and at the right moment this expression sprang from my tongue by itself.”
― Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World

“So much damned secrecy nowadays that nobody knows anything. Don't know what the other chap has; don't even know what you may have to use yourself. All these scientist fellers in back rooms ruining the profession. Can't keep up with what you don't know. Soldiering'll soon be nothing but wizards and wires.”
― john wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos

“Russia and China are now moving against us openly – in Afghanistan, the Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Even so, our conservative pundits are like blind men. They see the incompetence in Washington, yet they do not see the grand strategy that continues to unfold, step by step. We can still hear Sean Hannity and Mark Levin saying that “Reagan won the Cold War.” This slogan, however, is not an argument. It is not historically correct. It is a lie we learned from the communists. But nobody dares to re-examine it.
J.R.Nyquist”
― J.R. Nyquist

“Seize the means of propaganda! Take the reigns from the central-planners. Deny them the ability to steer you like livestock.”
― A.E. Samaan

“It's all these old people about. They ought to hand the world over to younger people who haven't got the idea of war stuck in their subconscious. As if it were the only solution... It's out of date-Stone Age stuff.”
― Ian Fleming, The Spy Who Loved Me

“t is interesting, he says, how weapons reflect the soul of the maker. The Soviets always wanted bigger yield, bigger stockpiles. They had to convince themselves they were a superpower. Throw-weight. What is throw-weight? We don’t know exactly but we agree it sounds like hurled bulk, the hurled will of the collective. Soviet long-range missiles had greater throw-weight. They had to convince themselves with numbers and bulk and mass. “And the U.S.?” I say. Eyes flicking my way, happy as carnival lights. It was the U.S., Viktor says, that designed the neutron bomb. Many buzzing neutrons, very little blast. The perfect capitalist tool. Kill people, spare property.”
― Don DeLillo, Underworld

“Deep down there is the feeling that what we participated in was morally wrong, and can never be looked upon as legitimate. We can make all kinds of excuses, but it can never justify the murder, the savagery and the barbarism that was inflicted on the Vietnamese people under the guise of saving the world from communism.”
― Terry Burstall, The Soldiers' Story: The Battle at Xa Long Tan Vietnam, 18 August 1966

“Vietnam was never a threat to America or Australia, but it was a threat to their perceived interests. For those selfish interests we fought and were maimed and died. It was not for patriotism, and not to save freedom or humanity: it was to save vested interests.”
― Terry Burstall, The Soldiers' Story: The Battle at Xa Long Tan Vietnam, 18 August 1966