The White House isn’t the place to learn how to deal with international crisis, the balance of power, war and peace, and the economic future of the next generation.
Joe BidenThe Russians feared Ike. They didn’t fear me.
Lyndon B. JohnsonWar is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.
Niccolo MachiavelliIt is difficult to violently suppress people in the long run, as the example of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries has shown.
Dalai LamaYou probably don’t need more weapons than what’s required to destroy every city on earth. There’s only 2,300 cities. So, the United States, by that criteria, only needs 2,300 nuclear weapons – well, we’ve got more than 25,000!
Carl SaganToday on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving.
Ronald ReaganI am well aware that there are prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union, including some who have said they have chosen to resist the law because of religious reasons.
Billy GrahamThe original reason to start the project, which was that the Germans were a danger, started me off on a process of action, which was to try to develop this first system at Princeton and then at Los Alamos, to try to make the bomb work.
Richard P. FeynmanLaw is always better than war.
Brian EnoBy disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.
Hunter S. ThompsonOn balance, my life has been a constant stream of blessings rather than disappointments and failures and tragedies. I wish I had been re-elected. I think I could have kept our country at peace. I think I could have consolidated what we achieved at Camp David with a treaty between Israel and the Palestinians.
Jimmy CarterThe events of October 1962 are widely hailed as Kennedy’s finest hour.
Noam ChomskyNATO’s essentially run by the United States.
Noam ChomskyI don’t know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there’s a good English phrase for it – cold war.
Golda MeirIn much of the world, there is a sense of an ultra-powerful CIA manipulating everything that happens, such as running the Arab Spring, running the Pakistani Taliban, etc. That is just nonsense.
Noam ChomskyIraq is a long way from the U.S., but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.
Madeleine AlbrightI’m glad I’m not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone’s tape recording what you say.
Richard M. NixonThe professed function of the nuclear weapons on each side is to prevent the other side from using their nuclear weapons. If that’s all it is, then we’ve gotta as: how many nuclear weapons do you need to do that?
Carl SaganWithout a tutor to help me in the study of Marxism-Leninism, I was no more than a theorist and, of course, had total confidence in the Soviet Union.
Fidel CastroSome have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary, confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror.
George W. BushThe 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. NixonEven the Soviet Union, with its huge nuclear arsenal, was a threat that could be deterred by the prospect of retaliation. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred. They can only be annihilated – preemptively and unilaterally, if necessary.
Thomas SowellI can’t really criticize the Tea Party people, because I came into the White House pretty much on the same basis that they have become popular. That is dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Washington and disillusionment and disencouragement about the government.
Jimmy CarterThe doctrine that everything is fine as long as the population is quiet, that applies in the Middle East, applies in Central America, it applies in the United States.
Noam ChomskyFrom Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.
Winston ChurchillThere’s not going to be a World War III, because there is no one to have World War III with.
Colin PowellI think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
John F. KennedyOn some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
H. L. MenckenIn November 2007, the White House issued a Declaration of Principles demanding that U.S. forces must remain indefinitely in Iraq and committing Iraq to privilege American investors.
Noam ChomskyWe should pass the U.N.’s Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism. At least it will clearly establish whom you view as a terrorist and whom you don’t. We need to delink terrorism from religion – to isolate terrorists who use this interchange of arguments between terrorism and religion.
Narendra ModiTake it from someone who fled the Iron Curtain: I know what happens when you give the Russians a green light.
Madeleine AlbrightLet us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
John F. KennedyCastro couldn’t even go to the bathroom unless the Soviet Union put the nickel in the toilet.
Richard M. NixonAs far as U.S. intelligence knows, Iran is developing nuclear capacities, but they don’t know if they are trying to develop nuclear weapons or not. Chances are they’re developing what’s called ‚nuclear capability,‘ which many states have. That is the ability to have nuclear weapons if they decide to do it. That’s not a crime.
Noam ChomskyI wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.
Jimmy CarterIf the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.
Ronald ReaganAs we dread any disease that undermines the health of the body, so should we deplore contention, which is a corroding canker of the spirit.
Russell M. NelsonThe United States strongly seeks a lasting agreement for the discontinuance of nuclear weapons tests. We believe that this would be an important step toward reduction of international tensions and would open the way to further agreement on substantial measures of disarmament.
Dwight D. EisenhowerYou can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.
Frank ZappaDo you realize the responsibility I carry? I’m the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.
John F. KennedyTwenty-six million Russians died in the defense of their homeland against the Nazis.
Fidel CastroWhen you’re not engaged in the day-to-day struggles that everybody feels, you slowly start losing touch. And I think it’s important for the people in the White House to have a finger on the pulse.
Michelle ObamaIn 1962, war was avoided by Khrushchev’s willingness to accept Kennedy’s hegemonic demands.
Noam ChomskyThere are many people in the world who really don’t understand-or say they don’t-what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin!
John F. KennedyFollowing the missile crisis, detente started to gain ground between the United States and the Soviet Union, so the international political climate improved after that.
Fidel CastroWar is what happens when language fails.
Margaret AtwoodIndia can live without nuclear weapons. That’s our dream, and it should be the dream of the U.S. also.
A. P. J. Abdul KalamNATO was constructed on the – with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western Europe from Russian assault. Once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, that reason was gone. So, first question: why does NATO exist?
Noam ChomskyThere are nuclear-weapons-free zones in several parts of the world already, except that they’re not implemented fully, because the U.S. won’t allow it.
Noam ChomskyI believed what my father taught me about the separation of church and state, so when I was President I never invited Billy Graham to have services in the White House because I didn’t think that was appropriate. He was injured a little bit, until I explained it to him.
Jimmy CarterThe memory of that scene for me is like a frame of film forever frozen at that moment: the red carpet, the green lawn, the white house, the leaden sky. The new president and his first lady.
Richard M. NixonToday I can declare my hope and declare it from the bottom of my heart that we will eventually see the time when that number of nuclear weapons is down to zero and the world is a much better place.
Colin PowellTake the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.
Will RogersA world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.
Margaret ThatcherNo one gives a damn what Iran thinks on any significant issue. The only reason Iran is at the big boys‘ table is because of their nuclear weapons program.
Jim MattisIf… 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.
Margaret ThatcherThe U.S.S.R. had absolutely nothing to do with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
Fidel CastroRonald Reagan said that he sought a Star Wars defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R.
Christopher HitchensAlthough September 11 was horrible, it didn’t threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.
Stephen HawkingAl Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we’re spending in Pakistan, we’re spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?
Joe Biden