Second World War Quotes - Page 6

• 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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• I think there are deep structural things that are wrong in the world. The US is the Western empire of the 19th century regrouping in the 20th, not out of wickedness, but because everybody else in Eurasia was so completely destroyed by the Second World War. Economically, that was quite a useful time for the US, so they ended up in the position of enormous power. And like any great power, they're going to act in their own interests. The problem is due to what the business community wants, which is to make as much money as they can out of what other people do and pay as little as possible for it.

  Robert Wyatt

  War, Thinking, People

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• Stalin was experimenting with telepathy in the 1930's. Winston Churchill had a paranormal office, trying to get people to travel out of their bodies and see behind enemy lines in the Second World War. And the Pentagon... The X-Files is based on a real department in the Pentagon, that's still there now. Pretty much every government, probably as far back in time as we can go, has one. And the police will quite often - and when I say often, I mean often - they will go to mediums if all else fails in the enquiry.

  Peter James

  Real, War, Mean

  Source: blog.exclus1ves.co.za

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• Tolkien was, I believe, writing about his experience in the First and Second World Wars, where he would have spent a lot of time without any female contact. He was part of the fellowship of men who went to war, and I think, really, that's what he's writing about.

  Richard Armitage

  War, Believe, Writing

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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 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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• We were such a part of everybody's life in the Second World War. We represented something overseas and at home - a sort of security.

  Patty Andrews

  War, Home, World

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• While the Second World War brought about untold misery and suffering, it was also a time when the world witnessed extraordinary bravery. Through the collective, heroic efforts of countless men and women, victory was claimed over tyranny and evil.

  Sam Kutesa

  War, Men, Evil

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• For more than twenty-five years my mind had been deeply troubled by the fact that these mechanical and scientific achievements ofman had outrun his intellectual and spiritual power. ...Throughout the Second World War this terrible problem hung in the back of my mind. As I write these words the problem and the danger are as threatening as ever. We hope our nation will survive, but in its effort to survive will it transform itself intellectually and spiritually into the image of the thing against which we fought?

  Virginia Gildersleeve

  Education, Spiritual, War

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• Between the postwar fifties - domesticity, people happy to be alive after the Second World War, wanting to build a home, make a family, make a nest. Women were pushed back into the home after having been active in the Second World War. It was a big Doris Day moment for women, which didn't suit all women.

  Sally Potter

  War, Home, People

  "TIFF: Interview with Sally Potter – Writer and Director of Ginger and Rosa". Interview with Melissa Silverstein, www.indiewire.com. September 13, 2012.

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• My family suffered very major losses during the Second World War, that's true. In my father's family, there were five brothers. I think four of them died. On my mother's side the picture was pretty much the same. Russia has suffered great losses. And of course we can't forget that.

  Vladimir Putin

  Mother, Brother, Father

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

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• Just as the people who lived through the Second World War thought different things on different days, I think everybody who goes through that period carefully now thinks different things on different days.

  Nicholson Baker

  War, Thinking, People

  "Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke". Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. April 7, 2008.

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• The Second World War took place not so much because no one won the First, but because the Versailles Treaty did not acknowledge this truth.

  Paul Johnson

  War, World, Versailles

  Paul Johnson (1972). “The offshore islanders; England's people from Roman occupation to the present”

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• I arrived in San Francisco in January 1951. After the Second World War, the population was so uprooted. Soldiers came back home for brief periods and took off again. So the population was very fluid, and suddenly it was as if the continent tilted west. The whole population slid west. It took 10 years for America to coalesce into a new culture. And the new culture happened in San Francisco, not New York.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  New York, War, Home

  Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 1, 2012.

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• The Philippines and the U.S. have had a strong relationship with each other for a very long time now. We have a shared history. We have shared values, democracy, freedom, and we have been in all the wars together in modern history, the World War, Second World War, Cold War, Vietnam, Korea, now the war on terrorism.

  Gloria Macapagal Arroyo

  Strong, War, Korea

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• I'm sort of optimistic about what we could do, but I'm very pessimistic about what we will do. I can't tell you that Al Gore's 10-year plan is impossible. I'm old enough to remember the Second World War - if we had a World War II-type mobilization, we might accomplish Gore's plan. In 1940 we were making tens of thousands of automobiles, and in 1941 we were making tens of thousands of airplanes. We mobilized as a nation. If we get that kind of mobilization as a nation or globally, then we could solve a lot of these problems.

  Paul R. Ehrlich

  War, Airplane, Optimistic

  "Q&A: Paul Ehrlich". Interview with Jesse Finfrock, www.motherjones.com. 2008.

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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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• Well, I've been reading a lot about the fifty years since the Second World War, about Western foreign policy and all that. I try not to let it get to me, but sometimes I just think that there's no hope.

  Thom Yorke

  War, Reading, Thinking

  "Thom Yorke’s View from the Stage". Interview with Judy Bond, www.lionsroar.com. November 1, 1998.

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• Before the Second World War, L'Oreal in France was an active supporter of the French fascists. The cosmetic group's founder Eugene Schueller was an active member of the 'Cagoule' group, committed to the violent overthrow of the Third Republic, and hosted meetings at Oreal headquarters.

  Geoff Mulgan

  War, Groups, World

  "Because you're worth it" by Geoff Mulgan, www.theguardian.com. June 12, 2006.

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• France has not been able to come to terms with the fact that it's not a major power anymore. I mean even before the Second World War Paris was one of the main centers of intellectual and cultural life. But now Paris is a kind of subsidiary of Germany, their traditional enemy and they can't come to terms with it.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Mean, Paris

  "Anti-Intellectualism, Terrorism, and Elections in Contemporary Education: a Discussion with Noam Chomsky". Interview with Dan Falcone, www.counterpunch.org. June 3, 2016.

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