Second World War Quotes - Page 4

• The number one priority now is reducing the deficit that they [Labour] left us - the biggest deficit since the Second World War.

  Iain Duncan Smith

  War, Numbers, Priorities

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• Carrying The Beatles' or the Sixties' dream around all your life is like carrying the Second World War and Glenn Miller around. That's not to say you can't enjoy Glenn Miller or The Beatles, but to live in that dream is the twilight zone. It's not living now. It's an illusion.

  John Lennon

  Dream, War, Twilight

  John Lennon, Yōko Ono, David Sheff, G. Barry Golson (1981). “The Playboy interviews with John Lennon and Yōko Ono”, Putnam Pub Group

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• You take a look at the history of African Americans in the US. There's been about thirty years of relative freedom. There was a decade after the Civil War and before north/south compact essentially recriminalized black life. During the Second World War there was a need for free labor so there was a freeing up of the labor force. Blacks benefitted from it.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Labor Force, Years

  "Noam Chomsky on America's Economic Suicide". Interview with Laura Flanders, www.alternet.org. May 4, 2012.

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• Why did the people think [Vietnam war] was fundamentally wrong and immoral? The guys who ran the polls, John E. Rielly, a professor at the University of Chicago, a liberal professor, he said what that means is that people thought too many Americans had being killed. Another possibility is they didn't like the fact that we were carrying out the worst crime since the Second World War. But that's so inconceivable that wasn't even offered as a possible reason.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• I was born in 1953, in Paris. But soon after my birth my family (I have one sister) moved into a rent apartment in suburbs of Paris named Romainville. That time my parents were freshly married and it was extremely hard to find an apartment in Paris for a young married couple. To say they found a flat in a blocks of houses which was built after the second World War - and this is the place where I spent my childhood.

  Richard Clayderman

  Couple, Block, War

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• If you look back to the anti-intervention movements, what were they? Let's take the Vietnam War - the biggest crime since the Second World War. You couldn't be opposed to the war for years. The mainstream liberal intellectuals were enthusiastically in support of the war. In Boston, a liberal city where I was, we literally couldn't have a public demonstration without it being violently broken up, with the liberal press applauding, until late 1966.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Boston, Years

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• My father, who was a sergeant in the RAF during the Second World War, was killed in a hitchhiking accident while returning home on compassionate leave. As a result, my mother had to get work, as a nurse, and at seven the RAF put me into a boarding school and ex-orphanage called the Royal Wolverhampton School.

  Eric Idle

  Mother, Father, War

  "Eric Idle: 'The BBC paid us £2,000 a series for Monty Python’". Interview with Angela Wintle, www.telegraph.co.uk. January 10, 2016.

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• When I see what is happening all over the world today - the violence - the stupid, arrogant, grotesque violence that is dominating humankind. I cannot not remember that there were other times, of course [the Second World War]. I never compare.

  Elie Wiesel

  War, Stupid, Arrogant

  Source: www.npr.org

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• Since the Second World War, rates of common mental illness (depression and anxiety) have been increasing in the industrialized nations, whereas rates of recovery from severe mental illness have not improved despite the availability of apparently effective therapies such as antipsychotic drugs.

  Richard Bentall

  War, Recovery, Availability

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• All those - or most of those - who went through the experience during the Second World War - they want to remember more - more and more. It's never enough because we feel that we have to tell the story. And no one can tell the story fully.

  Elie Wiesel

  War, Stories, World

  Source: www.npr.org

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• Just take Germany and the suffering of Jews during and after the Second World War. It would be legal to ridicule and to laugh at this suffering, but since it was such a trauma on the European conscience, no one is going to do it. It is an open scar, an open wound, an open reality.

  Tariq Ramadan

  War, Reality, Laughing

  "'You want my reaction? You get my silence.'". Interview with Lars Mensel and Clemens Lukitsch, www.theeuropean-magazine.com. November 19, 2012.

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• When I worked with General Electric, again this was soon after the Second World War, you know, I was keeping up with new developments and they showed me a milling machine and this thing worked by punch cards - that's where computers were at that time, and everybody was sort of sheepish about how well this thing worked because in those days machinists were treated as though they were great musicians because they were virtuosos on these machines.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  War, Musician, Cards

  "Kurt Vonnegut Judges Modern Society". "Morning Edition" with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. January 23, 2006.

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• Democratic governments are not delivering on their promises, which is partly due to the fact that governments are less powerful than they were after the Second World War. There were fewer governments then, but they actually had more political power.

  Mary Robinson

  Powerful, War, Government

  Source: www.egonzehnder.com

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• In general, I think, U.S. policies remain constant, going back to the Second World War. But the capacity to implement them is declining.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Thinking, World

  Noam Chomsky (2013). “Power Systems: Conversations with David Barsamian on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire”, p.44, Penguin UK

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• The First World War began because one man was shot. The Second World War began because of a mad German dictator. Who knows how a third could start. There are also people who think that the war has been going for a long time.

  Ronald Lauder

  War, Men, Thinking

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Sixty million people died in the Second World War. World War II was a gigantic crime. We condemn it all. We are against bloodshed, regardless of whether a crime was committed against a Muslim or against a Christian or a Jew. But the question is: Why among these 60 million victims are only the Jews the center of attention?

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  Christian, War, People

  "We Are Determined". SPIEGEL Interview, www.spiegel.de. May 30, 2006.

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• During the Second World War, nobody built any concert halls or theaters. After the war, Lincoln Center was a very brave project because all those architects had never built a theater before. We've learned a lot since then about the nature of materials and the isolation that's required.

  Hugh Hardy

  War, Lincoln Center, Brave

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• Classic music somehow changed, and it changed between the first and the second world wars, and somehow what happened was that the hero that had been the composer, the hero now was the performer, and especially the conductor.

  Esa-Pekka Salonen

  War, Hero, Firsts

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War.

  Alan Greenspan

  War, Retrospect, World

  "Greenspan on the Economy: Double Ouch" by Jonathan Stein, www.motherjones.com. March 17, 2008.

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• Einstein was attending a music salon in Germany before the second world war, with the violinist S. Suzuki. Two Japanese women played a German piece of music and a woman in the audience exclaimed: "How wonderful! It sounds so German!" Einstein responded: "Madam, people are all the same."

  Albert Einstein

  War, Two, People

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• I hate the word "method acting." It's just so silly. You hear people going, "Yeah I'm a method actor." I'm like, "So what happens if you're playing a period film or something? You're in the Second World War. And what happens when your mom calls you on your phone? Do you go, 'Oh! What is this strange talking brick device?'" No. It's stupid. But you do everything you can to get in that mindset.

  Jeremy Irvine

  Mom, Hate, War

  Source: www.justjared.com

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• I collect old first and second World War artifacts and things. I'm a little secret history nerd. I've been lucky enough to do quite a few war movies too so I've taken little things off each film.

  Jeremy Irvine

  War, Taken, Secret

  Source: www.justjared.com

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• When I was growing up, there was a man who gave me lessons and things. I'm very dyslexic so he used to give me extra reading and writing. And he always knew that I was interested in stuff but he never told me that he was in the Second World War himself. One day he gave me his helmet that he had worn through the North Africa Campaign. It was just before he died. So I've got his helmet. That was pretty special to me.

  Jeremy Irvine

  Growing Up, War, Reading

  Source: www.justjared.com

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• South Korea at the end of the Second World War had a very low level of literacy. But suddenly, like in Japan, they determined they were going in that direction. In 20 years' time, they had transformed themselves. So when people go on saying that it's all because of perennial culture, which you cannot change, that's not the way the South Korean economy was viewed before the war ended. But again within 30 years, people went on saying there's an ancient culture in Korea that has been pro-education, which is true.

  Amartya Sen

  War, Japan, Korea

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• These days we dimly believe that the Second World War was won with Russian blood and American money; and though that is in some ways true, it is also true that, without Churchill, Hitler would almost certainly have won.

  Boris Johnson

  War, Believe, Blood

  Boris Johnson (2014). “The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History”, p.10, Hachette UK

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