Top 165 Cold War Quotes

In World War II, jazz absolutely was the music of freedom, and then in the Cold War, behind the Iron Curtain, same thing. It was all underground, but they needed the food of freedom that jazz offered.

When President Kennedy set us on a path to the Moon in the 1960s, he knew exactly why – to produce a photo-op that would clearly show America would be the winner in the decades-long battle of political systems called the Cold War.

For Americans of the Greatest Generation that fought World War II and of the Silent Generation that came of age in the 1950s, the great moral and ideological cause was the Cold War. It gave purpose and clarity to our politics and foreign policy, and our lives.

No ideology better understands the need for enemies than neoconservatism, and when the cold war dramatically and unexpectedly ended, the way was prepared for the ‘Arab threat’ to emerge. ‘True Lies,’ the 1994 James Cameron comedy thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, duly served up the Arab villain Salim Abu Aziz.

Much as Cold War nuclear strategists could argue about winning a nuclear war by having more survivors, advocates of a Global Warming War might see the United States, Western Europe, or Russia as better able to ride out climate disruption and manipulation than, say, China or the countries of the Middle East.

The ‘Cold War’ impinged on the daily lives of Americans. The wars after 11 September 2001 have been fought without the general American population having to make any sacrifices. It goes on, and so do we.

I had a history teacher who taught us a lot about the Cold War. You had these examples of countries where the government had tried to manage the economy really intensely, and it ended up being bad for the citizens there. I found myself beginning to lean more right on economic issues.

Since the end of the Cold War, metropolitan elites everywhere have identified progress and modernity with the cornucopia of global capitalism, the consolidation of liberal democratic regimes and the secular ethic of consumerism.

Since the end of the Cold War, America has been grasping left and right for an identity.

Turkey, a powerful and reliable ally of the U.S. through the Cold War, appears to be coming unmoored from Europe and the West and is becoming increasingly sectarian, autocratic, and nationalistic.

There’s a tendency on the part of Americans, all of us, to say, ‘Hey, the Cold War is over, the Soviet Union is gone, we don’t have to worry about these guys again.’ We always have to be worried about them, we always have to be concerned about them, and we have to be well-informed.

We are not living in the same world we were immediately after the Cold War, when there seemed to be a greater belief in the universality of human rights and there was enough prosperity to make us question why we had not committed more resources to upholding the values we claimed to hold most dear.

If… many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made.

Those of my generation who grew up in the midst of the Cold War had a very, very strong awareness and very much were sort of influenced by the demonization of the Soviet Union, whether that was through the Cuban Missile Crisis or duck-and-cover, or any of those things that so affected us then.

Labour was always aligned with the U.S. during the Cold War, but the ignominious implosion of communism reinforced the belief that no alternative to the prevailing common sense was possible.

Two decades after communism and the alleged end of the Cold War, Russia is still a cash economy. The preferred currency is dollars, though euros are also acceptable.

When you think of the Cold War, there are various places where you imagine espionage. Espionage crossroads of the Cold War bring you to the backstreets of Berlin, or Vienna.

When Mitt Romney talked about Putin expanding his sphere of influence, Obama mocked and said, ‘The Cold War has been over 20 years, nothing to be worried about’… We keep making that mistake with Putin.

In 1988, the Summer Olympics were held in Korea, which was a divided country… It was an opportunity for the East and the West to come together in harmony and also take a significant role in ending the Cold War era.

I found it marvelous that the great supporters of America in Europe are, of course, those countries that American consistency and firmness in the Cold War ended up liberating.

It is extremely important that mass media, having freed from the relics of the Cold War, served for peace and dialogue between nations and religions, the rich and the poor, countries and continents.

President George H.W. Bush was a patriot who served our country in World War II, lead the CIA, an Ambassador to the United Nations, was the Vice President and the Commander and Chief who oversaw the end of the Cold War and successfully led our troops through the Gulf War.

Ronald Reagan will be remembered for leading the United States during a time of tremendous international transition – the demise of the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall coming down, and the end of the Cold War.

We defended our allies in Europe for 40 years during the worst days of the Cold War – very threatening days of the Cold War – and nothing happened. So deterrence does work.

The misconception that aid falls straight into the hands of dictators largely stems from the Cold War era.

Since the attack on the United States on September 11 2001, and the US retaliation in Afghanistan and Iraq, there must be few people who have not felt a twinge of nostalgia for the cold war.

If the 1988 Seoul Olympics was ‘reconciliation Olympics’ amid the cold war between East and West and the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics was a touchstone of peace, the 2032 Olympics will be promoted to become the last stop to establish the peace.

The great and abiding lesson of American history, particularly the cold war, is that the engine of capitalism, the individual, is mightier than any collective.

My feeling is that it’s a misreading of history to say that, as the Reagan supporters do, that Reagan won the Cold War.

I think the Cold War was worse for Africa than colonialism.

Why, a quarter of a century after the Cold War, do we still have 28,000 troops in Korea?

‘Call Of Duty’ initially cut its teeth on World War II simulation stuff, and then we gradually advanced to the end of the Cold War, but you can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again. And I think that because ‘Call Of Duty’ cut its teeth on presenting ‘realism,’ in quotes… verisimilitude.

I’m not a wide-eyed imperialist who wants to see Americans manning outposts all over the world. Not outposts to freedom in the cold war cliche, but islands of stability and seas of ethnic strife. That is not what anyone should feel comfortable seeing Americans doing.

During the cold war, it was easy for the Pentagon to justify its budget, as the Soviets essentially sized our forces for us. We simply counted up their stuff and either bought more of the same or upgraded our technology.

The barn doors are open, and the horses are running out because we’ve got guns all over the place. It’s basically a cold war for individuals: you’ve got a nuclear bomb, and I’ve got a nuclear bomb, and the only thing stopping us from using them is the fact we both have them.

Well, I actually grew up in the sixties. I feel very lucky, actually, that that was my slice of time that I was dealt. Let’s remember that the real motivation in the sixties, and even in the fifties, was the Cold War.

You must keep in mind that Pakistan has suffered the aftermaths of the Cold War, and that Cold War had left deep imprints on our society. We were the worst sufferers from the ills of the Afghan war.

What mattered in the cold war was weight – how big are your missiles? How heavy are your tanks? What matters in globalisation is speed. How fast is your modem? How good are you communications?

The fact that the 1984 cold war film ‘Red Dawn’ has been remade is more than just another sign of Hollywood declining into pastiche and repetition. It shows that, in a moment of deep capitalist crisis, the Red Peril is back.

The Elian events were shocking to Cubans because we were the fair-haired boys of the Cold War. The problem is, the Cold War ended.

But let there be no misunderstanding. The war against terror is every bit as important as our fight against fascism in World War II. Or our struggle against the spread of Communism during the Cold War.

For more than fifty years, the United States pursued a policy of isolating and pressuring Cuba. While the policy was rooted in the context of the Cold War, our efforts continued long after the rest of the world had changed.

With the end of the cold war, all the ‘isms’ of the 20th century – Fascism, Nazism, Communism and the evil of apartheid-ism – have failed. Except one. Only democracy has shown itself true the help of all mankind.

The Cold War in Africa is one of the darkest, most disgraceful pages in contemporary history, and everybody ought to be ashamed.

Russia is an important power upon which the U.S.A. imposed a Cold War.