Iron Curtain Quotes

• From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Atlantic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind the line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe... All these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Lying, Europe

  "The Sinews of Peace". Winston Churchill's speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, www.nato.int. March 5, 1946.

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• From behind the Iron Curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as its surface is hard.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Military, Iron, Trouble

  Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1960). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954”, p.7, Best Books on

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• From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Iron, History

  Address at Westminster College, Fulton, Mo., 5 Mar. 1946.

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• This scepticism is the same scepticism I heard a generation ago in the USSR when few thought that a democratic transformation behind the iron curtain was possible.

  Natan Sharansky

  Iron, Generations, Literature

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• The horrors of the Second World War, the chilling winds of the Cold War and the crushing weight of the Iron Curtain are little more than fading memories. Ideals that once commanded great loyalty are now taken for granted.

  Jan Peter Balkenende

  Crush, Loyalty, Memories

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• But scientists on both sides of the iron curtain played a very significant role in maintaining the momentum of the nuclear arms race throughout the four decades of the Cold War.

  Joseph Rotblat

  War, Heart, Race

  Joseph Rotblat, Daisaku Ikeda (2007). “A Quest for Global Peace: Rotblat and Ikeda on War, Ethics and the Nuclear Threat”, p.130, I.B.Tauris

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• Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe, together with the greater part of the [German] Reich. All over this territory, which would be of an enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.

  Joseph Goebbels

  War, Europe, Iron

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• With a rumble and a roar, an iron curtain is descending on Russian history.

  Vasily Rozanov

  Iron, Historical, Russian History

  "'Let Us Preach What We Practise': The Fulton Speech and Today's War" by Christopher C. Harmon, The Finest Hourmagazine, 135, p. 25, www.winstonchurchill.org. Summer 2007.

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• When the Iron Curtain fell, all of the West rejoiced that the East would become just as free as the West. It was never supposed to be the other way around.

  Rick Falkvinge

  Iron, East, Way

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• History has often showed us the strength of the forces that are unleashed by the yearning for freedom. It moved people to overcome their fears and openly confront dictators such as in East Germany and Eastern Europe about 22 years ago... The yearning for freedom cannot be contained by walls for long. It was this yearning that brought down the Iron Curtain that divided Germany and Europe, and indeed the world, into two blocs.

  Angela Merkel

  Wall, East Germany, Years

  Angela Merkel's Remarks in an Exchange of Toasts with President Obama, www.newsroomamerica.com. June 7, 2011.

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• The Dark Ages may return-the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of Science; and what might now shower immeasureable material blessings upon mankind may even bring about its total destruction. Beware! I say. Time may be short.
  Referring to the discovery of atomic energy.

  Winston Churchill

  Dark, Science, Blessing

  Winston Churchill (1949). “The Sinews of Peace: Post-war Speeches”

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• We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.

  Winston Churchill

  Men, Rights, Expression

  The Sinews of Peace, delivered 5 March 1946 Westminster College, Fulton Missouri

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• What can not be overcome in prayer? Answer me! What cannot be done by the hand of the Almighty? Answer me! What can be done by your feeble arms!? ANSWER ME! He can take down the iron curtain in a day, He CAN convert a nation in an hour. Call upon Him, believe Him.

  Paul Washer

  Prayer, Believe, Hands

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• Each successive Labour Government has been the most rapacious, doctrinaire and unpatriotic conspiracy to be seen this side of the Iron Curtain.

  Roy Jenkins

  Government, Iron, Sides

  Roy Jenkins (1985). “Partnership of principle: writings and speeches on the making of the alliance”, Secker & Warburg

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• This was 1990, the year that communism died in Europe and it seemed strange to me that in all the words that were written about the fall of the iron curtain, nobody anywhere lamented that it was the end of a noble experiment. I know that communism never worked and I would have disliked living under it myself but none the less it seems that there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was one based on self interest and greed.

  Bill Bryson

  Fall, Sadness, Self

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• 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.

  Herbie Hancock

  War, Iron, World

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• There is enough for all. The earth is a generous mother; she will provide in plentiful abundance food for all her children if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and in peace.

  William Bourke Cockran

  Mother, Children, Generosity

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• People behind the Iron curtain have such an incredible image of America and jazz. I expected to find a Gerry Mulligan or Miles Davis on every corner...I almost expected a Shorty Rogers to deliver the milk, a Bud Shank to be the mailman.

  Gabor Szabo

  Music, Iron, America

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• There is no figure who had more of an influence, no person had more of an influence on the intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain than Friedrich Hayek. His books were translated and published by the underground and black market editions, read widely, and undoubtedly influenced the climate of opinion that ultimately brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  Milton Friedman

  Book, Iron, Black

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• Just as that little opening in the Iron Curtain that Hungary created caused a flood of people out, and ultimately the beginning of the end of communism in Europe, if you could get refugee flows coming out of North Korea, while there'd be a very difficult humanitarian problem in the short run, both for China and South Korea, in the long run it would lead to reunification.

  John Bolton

  Running, Korea, Europe

  Source: humanevents.com

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• You know that Estonia, based largely on how successful Skype was, built by Estonian developers, that was a tenth of the entire country's GDP when eBay bought it. That was like a decade ago, it was f****** Estonia, they were behind the Iron Curtain two decades earlier. They're now pushing for K-12 education in computer science in public schools. They've gotten the message. They know how much value that can bring.

  Alexis Ohanian

  Country, School, Successful

  Source: thetartan.org

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• While the Soviet Union has imposed its rule on its neighbours and drawn an iron curtain between east and west, we in Great Britain have given freedom and independence to more than forty-eight countries whose populations now number more than a thousand million - a quarter of the world's total.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Country, Eight, Iron

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• If government ownership of land and natural resources was the best way to protect the environment, then we should have found a Garden of Eden in the Soviet Union after the Iron Curtain came down. Instead, there was one environmental horror story after another.

  Malcolm Wallop

  Garden, Horror Stories, Land

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• I'd get me a bunch of bats and balls and sneak me a couple of umpires and learn them kids behind the Iron Curtain how to tote a bat and play baseball.

  Dizzy Dean

  Baseball, Couple, Kids

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• An iron curtain has descended over Europe.

  Winston Churchill

  Europe, Iron, Curtains

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