Quotes & Sayings About Kgb

In the middle to late 1970s, when Putin joined the KGB, the secret police, like all Soviet institutions, was undergoing a phase of extreme bloating. Its growing number of directorates and departments were producing mountains of information that had no clear purpose, application, or meaning. An entire army of men and a few women spent their lives compiling newspaper clippings, transcripts of tapped telephone conversations, reports of people followed and trivia learned, and all of this made its way to the top of the KGB pyramid, and then to the leadership of the Communist Party, largely unprocessed and virtually unanalyzed. — Masha Gessen

[The Soviet State Security Service] is more than a secret police organization, more than an intelligence and counter-intelligence organization. It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries. — Allen W. Dulles

Next up is the fat family psychologist who makes his guests cry (he calls this "breaking through the wall of denial"), and invites them to leave if any of them dare question his methods. Hodges thinks the fat family psychologist might have learned those methods from old KGB training videos. — Stephen King

In addition, the long shadow of the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews perished - going, as the younger generation in Israel is constantly reminded, 'like lambs to the slaughter' - touches every family in the new homeland. Pride in being Jewish and determination to prove that never again will they let their defences down has its effect upon everybody in the service, from the youngest recruit to the most experienced veteran. For such reasons, the men and women of the Israeli intelligence community are more dedicated than their equally patriotic colleagues who work in the same line of business in other countries on behalf of the CIA, KGB or MI6. The — Ronald Payne

In this way, the Church was a true reflection of the whole of Russian society. The KGB and the Russian people had penetrated each other to such an extent that they could not be separated. The culture of betrayal and suspicion and distrust that the KGB relied on had become part of the national culture, poisoning politics in the 1990s and beyond: decades of corruption, murder and sordid sex scandals. If it cannot purge itself, however, the Russian nation will never rid itself of the illness that has driven people to alcohol. Russians need to trust each other again. — Oliver Bullough

Next time
we will roll out the red carpet for you in the United States of Arabia, my brethren! — Leonard Leventon

To say that the CIA and the KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus: on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I wanted to choose somewhere public, because I was scared of the KGB. — Mathias Rust

The boys and girls in the SVR, many of them former KGB officers, weren't holstering their Makarovs just yet. — Bryan Denson

Gentlemen. You are looking at the true Abraham Lincoln of Arabia. And in order to end our internal bickering - our civil war, if you will - I have solicited your aid. — Leonard Leventon

I've never been to the Soviet Union and the main reason for that is I was warned several times by people from the KGB who had defected to the West that it would be very unsafe for me to go there — Brian Crozier

They just didn't make them like that anymore. Nowadays she was lucky to get some mild flirtation from some leather-faced NRA lobbyist. Forget about doggy-style on an eighteenth-century canopied bed by a certified KGB agent who said things like beg for it my little Yankee poodle. — Magnus Flyte

In the past it would take you weeks, if not months, to identify how Iranian activists connect to each other. Now you know how they connect to each other by looking at their Facebook page. KGB ... used to torture in order to get this data. — Evgeny Morozov

One of my books, called 'Moscow Station,' revealed that a KGB archivist had defected from Russia to the FBI. And I knew that he was safe, and revealing this would not jeopardize him. But nevertheless, the FBI started a leak investigation. — Ronald Kessler

Inside the KGB offices, staff members were busy burning all the files. Putin later stated, "We burned so much stuff that the furnace exploded."46 He recounts that despite the local office's efforts to get the Soviet military to come to their rescue, and in general to defend their positions in East Germany, "Moscow was silent. . . . I only really regretted that the Soviet Union had lost its position in Europe, although intellectually I understood that a position built on walls . . . cannot last. But I wanted something different to rise in its place. And nothing different was proposed. That's what hurt. They just dropped everything and went away. . . . We would have avoided a lot of problems if the Soviets had not made such a hasty exit from Eastern Europe. — Karen Dawisha

Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage; there's no betrayal of trust. — Aldrich Ames

In Russia we only had two TV channels. Channel One was propaganda. Channel Two consisted of a KGB officer telling you: Turn back at once to Channel One. — Yakov Smirnoff

[Joffe], during a visit to Russia, complained to his KGB handler about the awful coffee. The KGB dude replied that it was really the Kremlin's answer to America's neutron bomb -- both killed people but left the building intact.

"I was then that I first saw this vision,"said Joffe. Bad coffee equals expansionism, imperialism, and war; good coffee drips with civility and pacifism and lassitude... — Stewart Lee Allen

hear him laughing. Perhaps this was the moment to mention Vasili Yenkov. He opened his desk drawer and took out Yenkov's KGB file. He picked up a folder of documents for Khrushchev to sign, then he hesitated. He was — Ken Follett

Of course the biggest mafia in Russia has always been the government; in Soviet times, the Communist Party, and now a circle of former KGB and FSB. — Martin Cruz Smith

Made me feel ashamed of belonging to these overpowering, technical superior countries fighting against what seemed to me quite defenseless people. — George Blake

paranoid, you said so in your notes. He knew the KGB and MVD were watching him in Minsk, and he's going to be afraid that the FBI and the — Stephen King

The British secret service was staffed at one point almost entirely by alcoholic homosexuals working for the KGB — Clive James

Putin and his colleagues were reduced mainly to collecting press clippings, thus contributing to the growing mountains of useless information produced by the KGB. — Masha Gessen

Perhaps my information hurt the Soviet Union more than it helped. I have no idea. It was not something I ever discussed with the KGB officers that I was dealing with. — Aldrich Ames

It has not been possible to build that society. It set very high standards, because not only would life in the Soviet Union or in any other country which adopted that system, have to be just as good as in the Capitalist world, it would have to be better. So that other peoples, other nations would want to join it, and obviously we have failed in that. — George Blake

All mathematics is divided into three parts: cryptography (paid for by CIA, KGB and the like), hydrodynamics (supported by manufacturers of atomic submarines) and celestial mechanics (financed by military and other institutions dealing with missiles, such as NASA). — Vladimir Arnold

The revolution is an amalgam of former Party functionaries, quasi- democrats, KGB officers, and black-market wheeler-dealers, who are standing in power now and have represented a dirty hybrid unseen in world history — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Stephen King is just one of the numerous modern engineers of human souls. This mega-writer got a mega-advance of seventeen million dollars for his latest book. The communist soul engineers would get an advance on their future historical guilt, crates of vodka, cirrhosis of the liver, and the constant possibility of a knock on the door from the KGB. — Dubravka Ugresic

My television teaches me that everything was wonderful in the Soviet Union. According to the programs I watch, the KGB and apparatchiks were angels, and the Stalin era was so festive that the heroes of the day must still be celebrated today. — Vladimir Sorokin

I'm sorry. The KGB did not have classes in cracker. — Larry Correia

Decades of indoctrination, manipulation, censorship and KGB excursions haven't altered this fact: People want a piece of their own little Something-or-Other, and, if they don't get it, have a tendency to initiate counterrevolution. — Frank Zappa

The childless experts on child raising also bring tears of laughter to my eyes when they say, I love children because they're so honest. There is not an agent in the CIA or the KGB who knows how to conceal the theft of food, how to fake being asleep, or how to forge a parent's signature like a child. — Bill Cosby

I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

Sergei, what are you checking for?" I asked. At first I thought it was funny. He moved quickly and efficiently, making a clean sweep of each room with me trailing behind him.

"I am checking to make sure we are alone," he informed me. "You could be spy."

"Sergei, I'm not a spy. There is no one here in my apartment besides you and me. You know where I work." I tried to assure him, but I didn't know what else I could do to convince him otherwise. — K. Kidd

KGB was inseparable part of the Soviet Union and the whole structure of the Soviet society. We believe that the achievements of the Soviet Union and of the Soviet society, it's main achievements until the split in 1991, it was at the same time the main achievements of the KGB, because it was working for the same cause. — Vladimir Semichastny

This is a man who has shown a complete disregard for human life, cynicism and hypocrisy, and a willingness to use war and the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers and innocent civilians as a PR instrument in his election campaign. This is a man who raised a toast on the anniversary of Stalin's birth, had the plaque commemorating former KGB head Yury Andropov restored to its place on the wall of the Lubyanka - Federal Security Service headquarters - and dreams of seeing the statue of butcher Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police, stand once again in the center of Moscow. — Garry Kasparov

The KGB still killed people, the KGB would not execute its last prisoner until the final days of its existence in 1991, but by the eighties a termination required paperwork and signatures and a post-action review. — Tom Clancy

I come from rather an international, or in other words, a cosmopolitan background. — George Blake

Now it's of peculiar interest to an Arab country that there is a company and a certain set of bankers who also finance the World Federation of Mental Health ... and we see that although the KGB and so forth seems to be associated with the World Federation of Mental Health, their other organization in action seems to go back to Jewish Bankers. — L. Ron Hubbard

Anyone can deceive us .... for a time.
[KGB] — Tom Clancy

I've been called a spy of Israel since 1996, and since I made my documentary film in 2000 the FBI has investigated me as an agent of Iraq. The FBI has also opened up an investigation into my wife calling her a KGB spy. — Scott Ritter

I've met enough KGB colonels in my life. — Garry Kasparov

I was very restless. I really wanted to be a part of a kind of a progressive society. I was fed up with these Communist doctrines and you were hassled all the time with members of the Party committee who were KGB, what you have to do, where in the West you can go or not to go. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

In Hitler's Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for every 2000 citizens, and in Stalin's USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people. In the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or informant for every sixty-three people. If part-time informers are included, some estimates have the ratio as high as one informer for every 6.5 citizens. — Anna Funder

Indeed, the KGB's nearly total control of the Russian Orthodox Church, both at home and abroad, is one of the most sordid and little known chapters in the history of our organization. — Oleg Kalugin

As the CIA and KGB, like God and Satan, fight Miltonic battles across five continents ... — Paul Johnson

When [Vladimir] Putin, a former lieutenant-colonel in the KGB, became Russia's president on December 31, 1999 - eight years after the failed coup attempt against (then Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev, and eight years after the people had torn down the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the hated founder of the KGB, in Moscow - it was admittedly a shock. Nevertheless, I decided to give Putin a chance. He seemed dynamic and capable of learning. But I had to bury my hopes after just a few months. He proved to be an autocrat - and, because the West let him do as he pleased, he became a dictator. — Garry Kasparov

Government employees are public servants and prohibited by the Constitution from inhibiting religious freedom, that is a far cry from sneaking around and into a church and acting like KGB agents. — Mathew Staver

What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of "being informed" by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this word almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. — Neil Postman

To go again over the history of the struggle of resistance ... and to think 'Where are all these people today Where is the KGB' is very inspiring — Natan Sharansky

If we had known it would eventually involve the KGB, the French National Police, and the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, we would have left that body in the river and called the Polizei like any normal German citizen; but we were Americans and addicted to solving other people's problems, so naturally, we got involved. — Rosanne Parry

We should be I hope finally realizing what Vladimir Putin is. He's an old colonel, KGB, apparatchik, and he dreams of the restoration of the Russian empire. — John McCain

The one thing that proved to me you were CIA and not KGB is when you gave me those medicines to test on my daughter. Because the KGB is heartless. They would have given me one pill and said, do it. I knew I was working with a humane organization when you gave me five medicines. — David E. Hoffman

The quality of Moscow's hired killers had slipped since the KGB's glory days. — Alexander Litvinenko

There was an intervention of the foreign states in the Russian Far East, Archangel of the West border of Russia. The foreign troops were participating in the attempts to stamp out the revolution. It's not just propaganda, because there are mounds of documents in the archives relating to these events and to the foreign espionage cases. — Vladimir Semichastny

Jung Chang said that Mao ruled by getting people to hate each other: 'Mao had managed to turn the people into the ultimate weapon of dictatorship. That was why under him there was no real equivalent of the KGB in China. There was no need. In bringing out and nourishing the worst in people, Mao had created a moral wasteland and a land of hatred. — Jonathan Glover

The experience of opposing mass movements was acquired by the KGB during perestroika. It was then that the politicians decided to develop and nourish mass movements for their purposes. — Vladimir Bukovsky

My notion of the KGB came from romantic spy stories. I was a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education. — Vladimir Putin

We have to remember that Putin was a member of the KGB. He has already demonstrated that kind of macho, dictatorial attitude. Russia has breached their pledge to uphold the Olympic charter. This is a great opportunity for the IOC to say we cannot, given the situation that exists currently, allow the Olympics to take place in Russia. — George Takei

The only thing I ever withheld from the KGB were the names of two agents whom I personally had known and handled and had a particular feeling for. — Aldrich Ames

Donald Maclean, a British diplomat who had spied for the KGB. "Maclean said: 'People who read Pravda every day are invincible.' People who are well informed and get their information from different sources inevitably start thinking," Kalugin — Arkady Ostrovsky

I saw a limit to what I was giving as kind of a scam I was running on the KGB, by giving them people that I knew were their double agents fed to us. — Aldrich Ames

The president(Obama) comparing him to a kid in the back of a classroom, I think, is very indicative of the president's lack of appreciation of who Vladimir Putin is. He's an old KGB colonel that has no illusions about our relationship, does not care about a relationship with the United States, continues to oppress his people, continues to act in an autocratic fashion. — John McCain

There is a little bit of everybody in everybody. — Leonard Leventon

I know not every mom is a secret KGB spy, but every mom has this whole other life. Every dad and every person has this whole other life. — Keri Russell

But we're all still KGB really. Old wine, new bottles. — Lee Child

As soon as I finished the Russian course, I was sent to Korea with the task of trying to establish an agent network, a network in the so called maritime provinces. — George Blake

Most people think spies are afraid of guns, or KGB guards, or barbed wire, but in point of fact the most dangerous thing they face is paper. Papers carry secrets. Papers can carry death warrants. Papers like this one, this folio with its blurry eighteen year old faked missile photographs and estimates of time/survivor curves and pervasive psychosis ratios, can give you nightmares, dragging you awake screaming in the middle of the night. — Charles Stross