History Quotes / ColdWar

->''"We were then, without public debate, committed to a never-ending war, even though the management knew that the enemy was no match for us, economically or militarily. But, through relentless CIA 'disinformation,' they managed to convince us that what was weak was strong, and that the Russians were definitely coming. '[[YouMayPanicNow Build backyard shelters against the coming atomic war!]]' A generation was well and truly traumatized."''

-->-- '''Music/{{Genesis}}''', "Music/LandOfConfusion"

->''"The Cold War began following the end of World War II when the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or the Soviet Union) emerged as the world's two superpowers, and subsequently the world's greatest prick-waving competition began...The Cold War eventually ended in victory for the United States, when the Soviet Union's cock got so big it eventually got erectile dysfunction and then proceeded to shit all over itself like a dying star as a result."''
-->--'''''Website/UrbanDictionary'''''

-->--'''''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gry1oDJrNck Let's Play]]''''' ''Dreamweb''

->''"Admittedly, besides its moral failure, communism failed in its crusade to convert the whole world...But communism's impact was and still is enormous. In addition to provoking significant changes in capitalist economies, such as vastly increased military spending and the growth of a military-industrial complex, the USSR's existence changed Western social development in fundamental ways.\\
Labor reform in the West in the past century came about under the threat of a radicalized international labor movement protected and supported by the USSR. President UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt's [[TheMoralSubstitute New Deal was in part meant to steal the thunder of radicals]] who looked to Moscow and therefore could not be ignored. Social goals that are commonplace today, including women's rights and racial integration, were planks of the Communist Party platform long before mainstream American parties took them seriously. It was Communists who first went to the American South and began organizing African-Americans and poor whites around issues of social justice. The more politically acceptable young people who followed them in TheSixties are heroes today. On the international scene the Soviet Union provided support for Nelson Mandela and other reformers. Communism made life difficult for Western establishments, and it is doubtful that reforms would have come when they did if the USSR had not existed. Communists always rejected reform in favor of revolution. Ironically, however, the existence of the Soviet Union helped the capitalist West reform itself and avoid the bloody revolutions of the East. Twentieth-century communism was no passing illusion; its legacies are everywhere."''

-> ''Except in their Balkan guerrilla strongholds, the communists made no attempt to establish revolutionary regimes...The communist revolutions actually made (Yugoslavia, Albania, China) [[RebelliousRebel were made '''against''']] [[DidntSeeThatComing Stalin's advice]]. The Soviet view was that, both internationally and within each country, post-war politics should continue within the framework of the all-embracing anti-fascist alliance, i.e. [[ChummyCommies it looked forward to a long-term coexistence, or rather symbiosis, of capitalist and communist systems]]...[[WhatCouldHaveBeen This optimistic scenario]] soon disappeared into the night of the Cold War, [[WrittenByTheWinners so completely]] that few remember [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness that Stalin urged the Yugoslav communists to keep the monarchy]] or that in 1945 British communists [[EnemyMine were opposed to the break-up of the Churchill wartime coalition]], i.e. to the electoral campaign which was to bring the Labour government to power. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that [[SincerityMode Stalin meant all this seriously]], and tried to prove it by dissolving the Comintern in 1943, and the Communist Party of the U.S.A. in 1944...For practical purposes, as dissident revolutionaries recognized, it was a permanent goodbye to world revolution.''

-->--'''Archibald [=MacLeish=]'''

-->--'''Creator/GoreVidal''', ''Dreaming War''

-->-- '''J. Arch Getty''', [[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/03/the-future-did-not-work/378081/ The Future Did Not Work]].

-->-- '''Eric Hobsbawm''', ''The Age of Extremes''

-->--'''Henry Kissinger'''

-->--''Series/ThePrisoner'', "The Chimes of Big Ben"

->''"Oh, it's the two [[UsefulNotes/TheUnitedStates global]] [[UsefulNotes/SovietUnion superpowers]]. They're having a [[BlatantLies friendly debate]] over which economic system is good and which one is an evil virus of Satan. [[TriggerHappy And they both have atom bombs]]. '''[[VideoGames/MortalKombat FIGHT!]]''' Wait, no, that would be [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt the end of the world]]. Let's just [[StealthPun keep it cool]] and spy on each other instead. [[BreadEggsMilkSquick And make sure we have enough atom bombs]]."''

-> ''Except in their Balkan guerrilla strongholds, the communists made no attempt to establish revolutionary regimes...The communist revolutions actually made (Yugoslavia, Albania, China) [[RebelliousRebel were made '''against''']] [[DidntSeeThatComing Stalin's advice]]. The Soviet view was that, both internationally and within each country, post-war politics should continue within the framework of the all-embracing anti-fascist alliance, i.e. [[ChummyCommies it looked forward to a long-term coexistence, or rather symbiosis, of capitalist and communist systems]]...[[WhatCouldHaveBeen This optimistic scenario]] soon disappeared into the night of the Cold War, [[WrittenByTheWinners so completely]] that few remember [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness that Stalin urged the Yugoslav communists to keep the monarchy]] or that in 1945 British communists [[StrangeBedfellows were opposed to the break-up of the Churchill wartime coalition]], i.e. to the electoral campaign which was to bring the Labour government to power. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that [[SincerityMode Stalin meant all this seriously]], and tried to prove it by dissolving the Comintern in 1943, and the Communist Party of the U.S.A. in 1944...For practical purposes, as dissident revolutionaries recognized, it was a permanent goodbye to world revolution.''

-->--'''Creator/BillWurtz''' puts the war in LaymansTerms during ''WebVideo/HistoryOfTheEntireWorldIGuess''

->''"Oh, it's the two [[UsefulNotes/TheUnitedStates global]] [[UsefulNotes/SovietUnion superpowers]]. They're having a [[BlatantLies friendly debate]] over which [[UsefulNotes/{{Communism}} economic]] [[UsefulNotes/{{Capitalism}} system]] is good and which one is an evil virus of Satan. [[TriggerHappy And they both have atom bombs]]. '''[[VideoGames/MortalKombat FIGHT!]]''' Wait, no, that would be [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt the end of the world]]. Let's just [[StealthPun keep it cool]] and spy on each other instead. [[BreadEggsMilkSquick And make sure we have enough atom bombs]]."''

->''"Oh, it's the two [[UsefulNotes/TheUnitedStates global]] [[UsefulNotes/SovietUnion superpowers]]. They're having a [[BlatantLies friendly debate]] over which [[UsefulNotes/SovietUnion economic]] [[UsefulNotes/Capitalism system]] is good and which one is an evil virus of Satan. [[TriggerHappy And they both have atom bombs]]. '''[[VideoGames/MortalKombat FIGHT!]]''' Wait, no, that would be [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt the end of the world]]. Let's just [[StealthPun keep it cool]] and spy on each other instead. [[BreadEggsSquick And make sure we have enough atom bombs]]."''

-->--'''Music/TomLehrer''', "Send The Marines"

-> ''Except in their Balkan guerrilla strongholds, the communists made no attempt to establish revolutionary regimes...The communist revolutions actually made (Yugoslavia, Albania, China) [[RebelliousRebel were made '''against''']] [[DidntSeeThatComing Stalin's advice]]. The Soviet view was that, both internationally and within each country, post-war politics should continue within the framework of the all-embracing anti-fascist alliance, i.e. [[ChummyCommies it looked forward to a long-term coexistence, or rather symbiosis, of capitalist and communist systems]]...[[WhatCouldHaveBeen This optimistic scenario]] soon disappeared into the night of the Cold War, [[WrittenByTheWinners so completely]] that few remember [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness that Stalin urged the Yugoslav communists to keep the monarchy]] or that in 1945 British communists [[StrangeBedfellows were opposed to the break-up of the Churchill wartime coalition]], i.e. to the electoral campaign which was to bring the Labour government to power. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that [[SincerityMode Stalin meant all this seriously]], and tried to prove it by dissolving the Comintern in 1945, and the Communist Party of the U.S.A. in 1944...For practical purposes, as dissident revolutionaries recognized, it was a permanent goodbye to world revolution.''

----

->''Admittedly, besides its moral failure, communism failed in its crusade to convert the whole world...But communism's impact was and still is enormous. In addition to provoking significant changes in capitalist economies, such as vastly increased military spending and the growth of a military-industrial complex, the USSR's existence changed Western social development in fundamental ways.\\
Labor reform in the West in the past century came about under the threat of a radicalized international labor movement protected and supported by the USSR. President UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt's [[TheMoralSubstitute New Deal was in part meant to steal the thunder of radicals]] who looked to Moscow and therefore could not be ignored. Social goals that are commonplace today, including women's rights and racial integration, were planks of the Communist Party platform long before mainstream American parties took them seriously. It was Communists who first went to the American South and began organizing African-Americans and poor whites around issues of social justice. The more politically acceptable young people who followed them in TheSixties are heroes today. On the international scene the Soviet Union provided support for Nelson Mandela and other reformers. Communism made life difficult for Western establishments, and it is doubtful that reforms would have come when they did if the USSR had not existed. Communists always rejected reform in favor of revolution. Ironically, however, the existence of the Soviet Union helped the capitalist West reform itself and avoid the bloody revolutions of the East. Twentieth-century communism was no passing illusion; its legacies are everywhere.

'''Two:''' Oh, certainly, but both sides are becoming identical. What in fact has been created is an international community -- a perfect blueprint for world order. When the sides facing each other suddenly realize that they're looking into a mirror, they will see that ''this'' is the pattern for the future.\\

->'''Number Two:''' It doesn't matter which "side" runs the Village.
->'''Number Six:''' It's run by one side or the other.
->'''Number Two:''' Oh, certainly, but both sides are becoming identical. What in fact has been created is an international community -- a perfect blueprint for world order. When the sides facing each other suddenly realize that they're looking into a mirror, they will see that ''this'' is the pattern for the future.
->'''Number Six:''' The whole world as the Village?

----
!!!Fictional

->''"So, come all you good travelers and [[DirtyCommunists fellow travelers]] too\\
Yes and travel all around the world, see every country through\\

But [[RunForTheBorder my passport's disappearing ]]as I sing these words to you\\

Yes and though [[MovingTheGoalposts the list grows larger]] you must try to understand\\

->'''UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill:''' Finally, Germany, Japan, and Italy have been beaten, and the planet is once again safe for democracy!\\
'''UsefulNotes/JosephStalin:''' That's what ''you'' think, comrade. [[TheEndOrIsIt Heheheheheheh]].
-->--''WesternAnimation/{{Histeria}}!'', "World War II"

->'''Calvin''': Too few role models. I'll be the fearless American defender of liberty and democracy, and you can be the loathsome godless communist oppressor. We're at war, so if you get hit with a dart, you're dead and the other side wins, OK?
->'''Hobbes''': Gotcha.
->'''Calvin''': GO!
->''[they shoot each other simultaneously]''
->'''Calvin''': Kind of a stupid game, isn't it?

->'''Cigarette-Smoking Man:''' I respect [[CivilRightsMovement King]]. He's an extraordinary man. But now he's talking like a Maoist. And if he convinces Negroes not to fight in Vietnam, we'll lose, and the first domino will have fallen.
->'''CIA Director:''' We must step up our efforts to discredit him.
->'''Cigarette-Smoking Man:''' Like your ridiculous suicide project? ''"There is but ONE way out for you!"'' That dumb letter attempting to drive King into despair only [[StupidCrooks alerted him to the level of our surveillance.]]
-->--'''''Series/TheXFiles''''', "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man"

->'''Donna Moss''': It was people pushing paper around fifty years ago. Why does it matter?
->'''Sam Seaborn''': It was high treason, and it mattered a great deal. This country is an idea, and one that's lit the world for two centuries. And treason against that idea is not just a crime against ''the living.'' This ground holds the graves of people who died for it, who gave what Lincoln called the last full measure of devotion, of fidelity.
-->-- ''Series/TheWestWing'', "Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail"

!!!RealLife
-> ''"If you ''[the USA]'' start throwing hedgehogs under me, I shall throw a couple of porcupines under you."''
-->--'''UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev'''

->''“The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision...Of course, over time, even two armed blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.”''
-->--'''Henry Kissinger'''

->''"We escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion."''
-->--'''Eric Schlosser''', ''Command and Control''

->''"When I was in the White House, I was confronted with the challenge of the Cold War. Both the Soviet Union and I had 30,000 nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire earth and I had to maintain the peace."''
-->--'''UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter'''

-> ''"Even during the years of the Cold War, the intense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, we always avoided any direct clash between our civilians and, most certainly, between our military."''
-->--'''UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin'''

->''“American foreign policy was a mirror image of Russian foreign policy: whatever the Russians did, we did in reverse. American domestic policies were conducted under a kind of upside-down Russian veto: no man could be elected to public office unless he was on record as [[PatrioticFervor detesting the Russians]], and no proposal could be enacted, from a peace plan at one end to a military budget at the other, unless it could be demonstrated that [[IShallTauntYou the Russians wouldn't like it.]]"''
-->--'''Archibald [=MacLeish=]'''

->''"We were then, without public debate, committed to a [[ForeverWar never-ending war]], even though the management knew that the enemy was no match for us, economically or militarily. But, through relentless CIA 'disinformation,' they managed to convince us that what was weak was strong, and that the Russians were definitely coming. '[[YouMayPanicNow Build backyard shelters against the coming atomic war!]]' A generation was well and truly traumatized."''
-->--'''Creator/GoreVidal''', ''Dreaming War''

->''"In my view, [[{{Russia}} it's a dungeon]]. It's a dungeon with a certain degree of social services. It is also a threat. It's a threat to its government, it's a threat to its own population, it's a threat to any nations within its reach. But its reach doesn't happen to by very long...On the other hand, the United States has created the image of a Soviet threat for the same reasons that ''they'' created the image of an American threat: as a way for us to [[NotSoDifferent justify intervention and aggression in our own domains.]]"''
-->---'''Noam Chomsky''' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Z05xyGB0c in]] 1985

-->--'''''UrbanDictionary'''''

->'''[[Creator/BenCroshaw Yahtzee]]:''' Everyone was living with the Cold War over their heads at the time. A lot of people were brought up thinking they were gonna get atomized any day now.
->'''Gabriel:''' That'd be an interesting way to live. I'd be a way bigger dick.
-->--'''''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gry1oDJrNck Let's Play]]''''' ''Dreamweb''

->''"Yeah! They're not an expansionist, propaganda-spewing, corrupt Communist nation any more! They're an expansionist, propaganda-spewing, corrupt ''capitalist'' nation. Boo-yah! We [[WonTheWarLostThePeace totally won that war!]]"''
-->--'''{{Website/SFDebris}}''' on ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' ("Future's End")

-->--'''NikitaKhrushchev'''

-->--''CalvinAndHobbes''

-->--'''{{Website/SFDebris}}''' on ''StarTrekVoyager'' ("Future's End")

-->--'''''Series/ThePrisoner''''', "The Chimes of Big Ben"

->'''[[Creator/BenCroshaw Yahtzee]]:''' Everyone was living with the Cold War over their heads at the time. A lot of people were brought up thinking they were gonna get atomized any day now.\\
'''Gabriel:''' That'd be an interesting way to live. I'd be a way bigger dick.