Soviet Quotes - Page 21

• There is no evidence to support the belief that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ever questioned Americas power. He questioned only the President's John F. Kennedys readiness to use it. Elie Abel, The Missile Crisis (1966) Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

  Lord Acton

  Power, Support, President

  Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 3 April 1887, in Louise Creighton 'Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton' (1904) vol. 1, ch. 13.

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• It is not the Soviet Union or indeed any other big Powers who need the United Nations for their protection. It is all the others. In this sense, the Organization is first of all their Organization and I deeply believe in the wisdom with which they will be able to use it and guide it. I shall remain in my post during the term of my office as a servant of the Organization in the interests of all those other nations, as long as they wish me to do so.

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Believe, Organization, Long

  Statement to the General Assembly of the United Nations, October 03, 1960.

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• And I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril.

  Jeane Kirkpatrick

  Thinking, Expansion, World

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• According to the Office of Technology Assessment, 3 Minuteman missiles and 7 Poseidon missiles could destroy 73 percent of oil-refining capacity in the Soviet Union.

  James Fallows

  Technology, Assessment, Oil

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• I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it. The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Country, Book, Offering

  A World Split Apart, delivered 8 June 1978, Harvard University

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• My parents, who were Communists, always pretended to be American patriots. You can always convince yourself you are: 'I love America, I just want it to be perfect, which it will be when it becomes a Soviet Communist state'. When the left called for 'liberation' what it really wanted was to erase the human slate and begin again. Like everybody else, I see things that need to be improved. I just am mindful of the fact that they can be made a lot worse.

  David Horowitz

  War, America, Perfect

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• All peoples enjoy freedom, and freedom for the development of their culture... There is no Jewish problem in the Soviet Union at all... I have many friends who are Jews.

  Anastas Mikoyan

  Unions, Culture, Development

  "The Soviet Government and the Jews 1948-1967: A Documented Study" by Benjamin Pinkus, (p. 66), 1984.

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• Czechoslovakia provided Soviet Russia with landing fields for aircraft, thereby increasing the threat against Germany.

  Adolf Hitler

  Russia, Germany, Fields

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• Our problem was that in the American approach to Soviet affairs policy has oscillated between people who take an essentially psychological approach and people who take an essentially theological approach, and the two really meet. The psychologists try to "understand" the Soviet Union. And try to ease its alleged fears. The theologians say the Soviets are evil.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Two, People, Evil

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• Today's Russia is not to be compared with the Soviet Union of back then.

  Angela Merkel

  Russia, Unions, Today

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Nixon tried to wrap the Soviet Union into a web of agreements that would constrain its behavior. What happened is that many people lost faith in that approach, not the least because of how the Soviets handled it.

  David Hoffman

  Agreement, People, Unions

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Scholars have been arguing for a long time whether the Soviet Union could have been turned into some kind of social democracy. I doubt it myself. I think what Gorbachev didn't quite understand, until it was too late, is that his efforts at change unleashed new, certrifical forces he hadn't counted on. He opened the door a crack and a huge wind blew it open.

  David Hoffman

  Thinking, Doors, Wind

  "David Hoffman on 'The Dead Hand' and End of the Cold War". Live Q&As, www.washingtonpost.com. September 21, 2009.

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• One answer to why public interest in men's tennis has been on the wane in recent years is an essential and unpretty thugishness about the power-baseline style that's become dominant on the tour. Watch Agassi closely sometime...he's amazingly absent of finesse, with movements that look more like a heavy-metal musician's than an athlete's...what a top PBer really resembles is film of the old Soviet Union putting down a rebellion. It's awesome, but brutally so, with a grinding, faceless quality about its power that renders that power curiously dull and empty.

  David Foster Wallace

  Sports, Athlete, Men

  "The String Theory" by David Foster Wallace, www.esquire.com. September 17, 2008.

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• No one is born a Communist... in the Soviet Union farmers keep on looking in the barn for their horses even after they have given them to the collective.

  Nikita Khrushchev

  Wisdom, Horse, Barns

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• Anyone who would understand the Reagan victory of 1980 and the movement that eliminated the Soviet Union and revitalized America must read-indeed must study-Craig Shirley's brilliant, comprehensive work.

  Newt Gingrich

  America, Victory, Movement

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• By May, 1st, 1937, there should not be one single church left within the borders of Soviet Russia, and the idea of God will have been banished from the Soviet Union as a remnant of the Middle Ages, which has been used for the purpose of oppressing the working classes.

  Joseph Stalin

  Russia, Class, Ideas

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• The Cold War philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which prevented the former Soviet Union and the United States from using the nuclear weapons they had targeted at each other, would not apply to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran. For him (Ahmadinejad), Mutual Assured Destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement.

  Bernard Lewis

  Philosophy, War, Iran

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• The time will come when a spacecraft carrying human beings will leave the earth and set out on a voyage to distant planets - to remote worlds. Today this may seem only an enticing fantasy, but such in fact is not the case. The launching of the first two Soviet Sputniks has already thrown a sturdy bridge from the earth into space, and the way to the stars is open

  Sergei Korolev

  Stars, Bridges, Two

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• It doesn't work the same way everywhere. The Americans are the most gullible, because they don't like to deny co-workers' requests. People in the former Soviet bloc countries are less trusting, perhaps because of their previous experiences with their countries' secret services.

  Kevin Mitnick

  Country, People, Secret

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• I decided to go into politics because of our Soviet-style government.

  Bidzina Ivanishvili

  Government, Style, Decided

  "Bidzina Ivanishvili: the eccentric billionaire chasing Georgia's leadership" by Luke Harding, www.theguardian.com. October 1, 2012.

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• Why should the Negroes ever fight against the only nations of the world where racial discrimination is prohibited, and where the people can live freely? Never! I can assure you, they will never fight against either the Soviet Union or the peoples' democracies.

  Paul Robeson

  Fighting, People, Democracy

  Paul Robeson, Philip Sheldon Foner (1978). “Paul Robeson speaks: writings, speeches, interviews, 1918-1974”, Brunner-Routledge

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• I did a long concert tour in England and Denmark and Sweden, and I also sang for the Soviet people, one of the finest musical audiences in the world.

  Paul Robeson

  Long, People, Musical

  Paul Robeson, Philip Sheldon Foner (1978). “Paul Robeson speaks: writings, speeches, interviews, 1918-1974”, Brunner-Routledge

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• I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence.

  Vladimir Putin

  Country, Political, Foundation

  Interview with TF-1 Television Channel (France), en.kremlin.ru. July 12, 2006.

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• Mo Yan is the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Russian apparatchik writer Mikhail Sholokhov: a patsy of the regime.

  Salman Rushdie

  Chinese, Regimes

  "Literary Feuds of 2012" by Rachel Arons, www.newyorker.com. December 30, 2012.

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• After the Soviet collapse, Marxism is a relic, a pathetic anachronism reduced to its last redoubts: North Korea, Cuba, and the English departments of the more expensive American universities.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Korea, Cuba, Lasts

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