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

“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

“Wait a minute. What was that name you mentioned? Something about Allah?”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“The night had teeth. Wind tore through the apple trees, their skeletal branches clawing at the sky. Beyond the garden fence, the dacha settlement lay in uneasy slumber—rows of dark shacks, abandoned for the season, their windows blind and cold.

Chicken-wire fences sagged under rust and neglect, some topped with barbed wire that glinted like fangs in the distant glow of Moscow. Far off, a cement plant loomed against the horizon, a hulking silhouette of Soviet ambition gone to rot. To the north, the pines of Elk Island groaned under the gale, their black crowns thrashing like beasts in chains. And above it all, the October sky churned with torn clouds, racing toward some unseen war.

I walked two hundred yards down the gravel drive, past sleeping plots fenced in rusted wire, boots rasping over dry, dead grass. Tested the radio. Exchanged a few words with Romeo.

Static hissed like a snake in the dark, but the signal held.”
― R. Magnusholm, Last Tango in Moscow: A Cold War Tale of Espionage, the Mafia, and Forbidden Love

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

“Lies. I wasn’t their friend. I was a parasite in human shape, feeding on their trust, using their affection as camouflage. For a moment I saw myself from the outside—a dark, smiling thing sitting at their table, glass in hand, laughing at their jokes.”
― R. Magnusholm, Last Tango in Moscow: A Cold War Tale of Espionage, the Mafia, and Forbidden Love

“Snow fell softly outside, and frost crept over the windowpanes, weaving its white filigree—beautiful and cold, merciless as truth.”
― R. Magnusholm, Last Tango in Moscow: A Cold War Tale of Espionage, the Mafia, and Forbidden Love

“That autumn felt like the last season of innocence—soft, golden, and already slipping away.”
― R. Magnusholm, Last Tango in Moscow: A Cold War Tale of Espionage, the Mafia, and Forbidden Love

“Like many educated Soviet families, they had only one child—setting their family lines on a slow path to extinction... In China, the one-child policy had to be enforced by the government. Here, it was enforced by the people themselves.”
― R. Magnusholm, Last Tango in Moscow: A Cold War Tale of Espionage, the Mafia, and Forbidden Love

“I began putting on a fake Ukrainian accent to mask the lingering quirks of my American speech. It wasn’t hard. All I had to do was substitute “g” for “h” and say Haharin and Horky instead of Gagarin and Gorky. Even my voice was no longer my own.”
― R. Magnusholm, Last Tango in Moscow: A Cold War Tale of Espionage, the Mafia, and Forbidden Love

“History was censored. The kitchen remembered.”
― Angelika Regossi, Russian Colonial Food: Journey through the dissolved Communist Empire

“The most dangerous place isn’t the bunker—it’s the truth buried inside it.”
― C. K. MALACH, THE B-17 BUNKER: A Cold War Horror Thriller

“He had created a son—not in a conventional manner, nor one a DNA test would confirm, but certainly in the most important sense. He wondered where the boy was now and what he was doing, the product of biological alchemy and the man’s greatest and most secret success.”
― Dee A. Replogle, Jr.

“What if there had been a whole army of us - each with our own secret magic, each keeping watch - and one day we all stopped at the same time, without realizing it? Is that not why the climate is falling apart so fast?”
― Dobromir Dashkov, Autosaved: Tales from a Lost Galaxy — Book 2: A Gritty, Sarcastic Survival Guide to Life Behind the Iron Curtain

“And if the President is for peace, I'm for the President. If not - then I'm not. Simple as that.”
― Dobromir Dashkov

“Every cargo ship carried secrets in its ballast…

Somewhere between bananas and microchips, a little cold war still breathing.”
― Ryan Gelpke, No Hours Left in Lisbon