Soviet Quotes - Page 17

• I guess the prime example is in North America there's a thing where if there's no opportunity to move forward with the puck, then a [hockey] player is told to dump the puck into the other zone. Just give up the puck and dump it in. Give it to the other team. And to the Soviet mentality in coaching, it just doesn't make any sense. If you're a skilled player, why are you going to give the puck away to the other team? Just give it away, right?

  Gabe Polsky

  Giving Up, Team, Moving

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Soviet Union foreign policy is a puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma, and the key is Russian nationalism.

  Winston Churchill

  Keys, Unions, Riddle

  6 Copy quote

• Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all - in one way or another - obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster. What people were supporting was failure. And continually justifying it.

  Doris Lessing

  Country, People, Unions

  "A Notorious Life". Interview with Dwight Garner, www.salon.com. November 11, 1997.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• More often than not, Americans and Westerners overestimated the power and capability of the Soviet Union.

  Alexander Haig

  Unions, Soviet Union, Capability

  4 Copy quote

• Propaganda was an important arm of the Soviet diplomacy, very important.

  Alexander Haig

  Important, Arms, Propaganda

  4 Copy quote

• The Soviet Union came apart along ethnic lines. The most important factor in this breakup was the disinclination of Slavic Ukraine to continue under a regime dominated by Slavic Russia. Yugoslavia came apart also, beginning with a brutal clash between Serbia and Croatia, here again 'nations' with only the smallest differences in genealogy; with, indeed, practically a common language. Ethnic conflict does not require great differences; small will do.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  Breakup, Russia, Ukraine

  22 Copy quote

• Singing 'Blowin' in the Wind' all the places we've been, it takes on a different meaning everywhere. When you sing the line, 'How many years can a people exist, before they're allowed to be free?' in a prison yard for political prisoners in El Salvador; if you have sung it to a group of union organizers, who have all been in jail, in South Korea; if you've sung to Jews in the Soviet Union who have been refused exit visas; if you've sung it with Bishop Tutu protesting apartheid, the song breathes, it lives, it has a contemporary currency.

  Mary Travers

  Song, Wind, Jail

  19 Copy quote

• In America, you assassinate president. In Soviet Russia, president assassinate you!

  Yakov Smirnoff

  Russia, America, President

  19 Copy quote

• In America, you drive car. In Soviet Russia, car drive you!

  Yakov Smirnoff

  Russia, America, Car

  4 Copy quote

• I recall asking the late eminent liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, in a public forum in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, if he would say that America was, all things considered, a better, i.e., more moral, society than Soviet society. He said he would not.

  Dennis Prager

  America, Asking, Moral

  4 Copy quote

• Socialism's failure in the former Soviet Union and in the other socialist countries stands as a clean and unquestionable warning as to which path any rational and sane people should never follow again. Government planning brought poverty and ruin...Unfortunately, America is not absorbing the lessons that should be learned from the socialist experience and, instead, is following the same path of destruction.

  Richard Ebeling

  Country, America, Socialist Countries

  6 Copy quote

• If you read the literature of Soviet Communism, you see a dogma that's chilling. On the other hand, if you read the literature of anti-communism, it's every bit as dogmatic.

  Bill Ayers

  Hands, Literature, Chill

  "The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Bill Ayers". Interview with Rachel DeWoskin, therumpus.net. December 1, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have a Ph.D. in philosophy and sports science. At 14, I went through this really tough Soviet training system. A lot of my roommates got psychologically broken or physically injured. Either you came through, or you were out. I made my Ph.D. work in the field of young athletes aged 14-19 because at this age any human is changing.

  Wladimir Klitschko

  Sports, Philosophy, Athlete

  9 Copy quote

• In Soviet times the border was closed so we couldn't get out of the country, and I had been reading Robinson Crusoe. I wanted to see the ocean, I wanted to see boats, I wanted to see black people, because we didn't have that in the Soviet Union. I was all excited by that stuff.

  Wladimir Klitschko

  Country, Ocean, Reading

  "Wladimir Klitschko: Dr Feelgood has a cure for David Haye's disrespect". Interview with Paul Hayward, www.theguardian.com. June 25, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Peace, Land, and Bread! All power to the Soviet!

  Vladimir Lenin

  Land, Bread

  8 Copy quote

• These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Perfect, People, Toilets

  P. J. O'Rourke (2016). “Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and (Other) Outrages of . . .”, p.38, Pan Macmillan

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• I look at the great poets of the Soviet Union, like Anna Akhmatova, who endured far worse then anything we've seen or hopefully that we will ever see. If they could keep writing and keep a voice alive, keep people hopeful through their poetry, then I would be ashamed to stop and to give in. It would be really self-indulgent, unacceptable, and inexcusable to walk away from it.

  Sara Paretsky

  Writing, Self, Voice

  Source: www.progressive.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Gorecki, you know, there's a kind of personal thing there for me. I had, you know, kind of become obsessed with that sort of Soviet Bloc period. And actually, a lot of composers in the Soviet Bloc - Gorecki's not the only one - are writing for the harpsichord as a sort of reaction against enforced Soviet realism, expressionism, sort of enforced modernism.

  Mahan Esfahani

  Writing, Kind, Obsessed

  "How To Annoy Your Dad: Play The Harpsichord". "All Things Considered" with Robert Siegel, www.npr.org. December 29, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the things that's amazing about reading the private writing of these folks is that they enthusiastically describe things which we have now seen, and which are widely regarded as unappealing. They'll write, "It's going to be beautiful, we're going to have a town of 1,000 stone buildings that are all identical." And we as modern readers think, we've seen that; that's bad Soviet architecture or a public housing project. Nobody fantasizes about living there.

  Christine Jennings

  Beautiful, Reading, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the most violent attacks on the Church in the Soviet Union was under Kruschev when, during a period of economic and political liberalization, he attacked the Church to demonstrate to old Party members that he hadn't lost it.

  George Pattison

  Party, Political, Church

  "Towards hope". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. July 18, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was thought that to rally Islam against godless communism would be doing the Soviet Union a very bad turn indeed, and that, in fact, transpired.

  Edward Said

  Islam, Would Be, Unions

  Edward W. Said, David Barsamian (2003). “Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said”, p.107, Pluto Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is also this great sense of triumphalism, that just as we defeated the Soviet Union, we can do this. And out of this sense of desperation and pathological religion, there develops an all-encompassing drive to harm and hurt, without regard for the innocent and the uninvolved, which was the case in New York.

  Edward Said

  Hurt, New York, Unions

  Source: www.progressive.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I was young, communism, which had a certain allure to me, was clearly a failed experiment in the Soviet Union and in China. And yet, anti-communism was as bad.

  Bill Ayers

  Unions, Communism, Allure

  "The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Bill Ayers". Interview with Rachel DeWoskin, therumpus.net. December 1, 2013.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Soviet foreign ministers would come in to see the president all the time, routinely. Jimmy Carter stopped that after the invasion of Afghanistan. Ronald Reagan resumed it in 1984, I think. And so the fact of a meeting like that I think is not that big a deal.

  Robert M. Gates

  Thinking, President, Afghanistan

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If government ownership of land and natural resources was the best way to protect the environment, then we should have found a Garden of Eden in the Soviet Union after the Iron Curtain came down. Instead, there was one environmental horror story after another.

  Malcolm Wallop

  Garden, Horror Stories, Land

  6 Copy quote