Quotes & Sayings About Iron Curtain

Late news was suicide of w:Jan Masaryk - In my view, Jan Masaryk was thoroughly corrupt, who bumped himself off because he saw at last where his moral cowardice and ideological 'Playboyery' had led him. I vividly remember visiting him in Washington, fat, slightly tight, coming into the room looking like a broken-down butler with his master, the little Communist, Clementis, [-] and saying in a loud voice -'Has anyone seen an Iron Curtain? I haven't.' Well, he has now. — Malcolm Muggeridge

In no country has the historical blackout been more intense and effective than in Great Britain. Here it has been ingeniously christened The Iron Curtain of Discreet Silence. Virtually nothing has been written to reveal the truth about British responsibility for the Second World War and its disastrous results. — Harry Elmer Barnes

The Iron Curtain may be a thing of the past, but Mother Russia is as mysterious as ever. — Robert Gottlieb

In my first novel the heroine didn't get her man, in my second the heroine was 64 years old, my third was a romantic suspense set behind the Iron Curtain, my fourth had no wedding bells, not even in the far distance. — Maynah Lewis

With a rumble and a roar, an iron curtain is descending on Russian history. — Vasily Rozanov

I wrote somewhere during the Cold War that I sometimes wish the Iron Curtain were much taller than it is, so that you could see whether the development of science with no communication was parallel on the two sides. In this case it certainly wasn't. — Thomas Gold

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

We could only solve our problems by cooperating with other countries. It would have been paradoxical not to cooperate. And therefore we needed to put an end to the Iron Curtain, to change the nature of international relations, to rid them of ideological confrontation, and particularly to end the arms race. — Mikhail Gorbachev

There is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs forever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real. — E. Nesbit

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

Take it from someone who fled the Iron Curtain: I know what happens when you give the Russians a green light. — Madeleine Albright

America is a nation of illusions; illusions in the media, schools and government - an iron curtain of propaganda. — Bryant McGill

The next day, 25 February 1945, Goebbels warned, in an article in The Reich, that, if Germany surrendered, Stalin would immediately occupy south-eastern Europe, and 'an iron curtain would immediately fall on this huge territory, together with the vastness of the Soviet Union, and nations would be slaughtered behind it'. — Richard J. Evans

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

I have a whole box full of pieces of the Berlin Wall and a heart made from the barbed wire of the Iron Curtain. It's - they're cherished treasures to me now, of course. — Carol Guzy

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

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

An iron curtain has descended over Europe. — Winston Churchill

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

You have won the Cold War ... [Your] underappreciated valor [helped] topple the Berlin Wall, and bring down dictators the world over ... For the past four decades the world behind the Iron Curtain ... looked to Americans for hope, and America looked to you to get the job done. Today, the free world says thank you. — Bob Dole

It is the face of his own evil shadow that grins at Western man from the other side of the Iron curtain. — C. G. Jung

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

These diverse effects of slavery and freedom are easily understood: ... the men in Kentucky [neither] have zeal nor enlightenment ... cross over into Ohio in order to utilize their industry and to be able to exercise it without shame ... in Kentucky, masters make slaves work without being obliged to pay them, but they receive little fruit from their efforts, while the money that they would give to free workers would be recovered with interest from the value of their labors. — Alexis De Tocqueville

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

I spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain, and their cars were abysmal. — P. J. O'Rourke

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

Countries like Iran and China support an Internet Iron Curtain that would censor political dissidents and deny anonymous activity online through mandatory registrations of IP addresses. — Marsha Blackburn

The inner censor of the mind of the true believer completes the work of the public censor; his self-discipline is as tyrannical as the obedience imposed by the regime; he terrorizes his own conscience into submission;he carries his private Iron Curtain inside his skull, to protect his illusions against the intrusion of reality. — Arthur Koestler

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

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

If the German people lay down their arms the whole of Eastern and Southern Europe, together with the Reich, will come under Russian occupation. Behind an iron curtain mass butcheries of people would begin. — Joseph Goebbels

I am a witness to nations and people deprived of their freedom. I was there. I watched that great Iron Curtain drop around nations which formerly had prized their freedom - good people. I was aghast as these were written off by the stroke of a pen. — Ezra Taft Benson

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

When I served in the Army, along the Iron Curtain we had a word for a person who absconds with information and provides it to another nation: traitor. We also had a name for a person who chooses to reveal secrets he had personally promised to protect: common criminal. — Mike Pompeo

So he held toward them an attitude of iron reserve; he lived with them, but behind a wall, a curtain. And toward himself he was even more exacting. — Richard Wright

I am one of those people who believes that the solution to the world's problems is to be found behind the Iron Curtain. — Che Guevara

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

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

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

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

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

The Eurythmics were back on the charts. Dirty Dancing was at the box office. The Iron curtain was still standing. Margaret Thatcher had been re-elected for a third term. There we were, back in 1987. — Nicola Lagioia

I don't want to live in a militarised country behind an iron curtain. It's boring. Been there and seen the movie. I've done that. — Dmitry Medvedev