Quotes about the Cold War

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Winston Churchill. (1946)

We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked. Dean Rusk

President Reagan fuelled the spirit of America. His smile, his optimism, his total belief in the ultimate triumph of democracy and freedom, and his willingness to act on that belief, helped end the Cold War and usher in a new and brighter phase of history. Colin Powell

We helped keep the Cold War cold. . . .A war without casualties cannot be as famous as a horrible war, but it is preferable. Edward Teller

We had a wonderful record on the hydrogen bomb. We tested it, perfected it and never used it – and that served to win the Cold War. Edward Teller

We didn’t win the Cold War, we were just a big bank that bankrupted a smaller bank because we had an arms race that wiped the Russians out. Norman Mailer

Let us not be deceived – we are today in the midst of a cold war. Bernard Baruch (speech given in 1947)

Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you. Nikita Khruschev (said to Western diplomats in 1956)

The Cold War isn’t thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn’t sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting. Richard M Nixon

When, in the late 1940’s, we faced a global Cold War against another system of ideological fanatics certain that their authoritarian values would eventually rule the world, we prevailed in time. We prevailed because we exercised patience as well as vigilance, self-restraint as well as self-defense, and reached out to moderates and modernists, to democrats and dissidents, within that closed system. Theodore Sorensen

We don’t propose to sit here in our rocking chair with our hands folded and let the Communists set up any government in the Western Hemisphere. Lyndon Baines Johnson

The Cold War began with the division of Europe. It can only end when Europe is whole. George H W Bush