Quotes & Sayings About Khrushchev

Even now we feel that Stalin was devoted to Communism, he was a Marxist, this cannot and should not be denied. — Nikita Khrushchev

The thought sometimes
the unpleasant thought sometimes creeps up on me here as to whether perhaps Khrushchev was not invited here to enable you to sort of rub him in your sauce and to show the might and the strength of the United States so as to make him sort of ... so as to make him shaky at the knees. If that is so, then if I came
if it took me about 12 hours to get here, I guess it'll just
it'll take no more than about 10½ hours to fly back. — Nikita Khrushchev

A heckler once interrupted Nikita Khrushchev in the middle of a speech in which he was denouncing the crimes of Stalin. "You were a colleague of Stalin's," the heckler yelled, "why didn't you stop him then?" Khrushschev apparently could not see the heckler and barked out, "Who said that?" No hand went up. No one moved a muscle. After a few seconds of tense silence, Khrushchev finally said in a quiet voice, "Now you know why I didn't stop him." Instead of just arguing that anyone facing Stalin was afraid, knowing that the slightest sign of rebellion would mean certain death, he had made them feel what it was like to face Stalin - had made them feel the paranoia, the fear of speaking up, the terror of confronting the leader, in this case Khrushchev. The demonstration was visceral and no more argument was necessary. — Robert Greene

Call it what you will, incentives are what get people to work harder. — Nikita Khrushchev

The Americans have surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they will learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointed at you; we'd be doing nothing more than giving them a little of their own medicine. — Nikita Khrushchev

If you live among dogs, keep a stick. After all, this is what a hound has teeth for-to bite when he feels like it! — Nikita Khrushchev

The train is speeding into a luminous future. Lenin is at the controls. Suddenly - stop, the tracks come to an end. Lenin calls on the people for additional, Saturday work, tracks are laid down, and the train moves on. Now Stalin is driving it. Again the tracks end. Stalin orders half the conductors and passengers shot, and the rest he forces to lay down new tracks. The train starts again. Khrushchev replaces Stalin, and when the tracks come to an end, he orders that the ones over which the train has already passed be dismantled and laid down before the locomotive. Brezhnev takes Khrushchev's place. When the tracks end again, Brezhnev decides to pull down the window blinds and rock the cars in such a way that the passengers will think the train is still moving forward. (Yurii Boriev, Staliniad, 1990) — Ryszard Kapuscinski

The United States will eventually fly the Communist red flag ... The American people will hoist it themselves. — Nikita Khrushchev

The purpose of the United Nations should be to protect the essential sovereignty of nations, large and small. — Nikita Khrushchev

When Nikita Khrushchev wrapped himself in the bloody mantle of the Czars he broke Hungary, he broke the little Communist parties over the western world, and he broke the hearts of many honest men who had trusted a little too far, a little too long. — James Cameron

This is a wrong course the Chinese comrades are trying to lead us on to, it is an opportunist road of vacillation and concessions to the Khrushchev traitor group which finds itself in grave difficulties, and is intriguing in order to escape defeat. — Enver Hoxha

[Khrushchev] should get a one-ton medal. — Mao Zedong

I once said, 'We will bury you,' and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you. — Nikita Khrushchev

If we were to promise people nothing better than only revolution, they would scratch their heads and say: 'Is it not better to have good goulash?' — Nikita Khrushchev

Less well known but perhaps even more convincing is that Khrushchev's own and most ambitious attempt at reversing the process of detotalitarization turned into a complete failure. In 1957, he introduced a new "law against social parasites," which would have enabled the regime to reintroduce mass deportations, re-establish slave labor on a large scale, and - most importantly for total domination - to let loose another flood of mass denunciations; for "parasites" were supposed to be selected by the people themselves in mass meetings. The — Hannah Arendt

After asking Humphrey to name his native city, Khrushchev bounced to his feet and drew a bold blue circle around Minneapolis on a map of the United States hanging on his wall - "so that I don't forget to order them to spare the city when the rockets fly. — Frederick Kempe

(from Diana to Deborah, 8 May 1998)
Talking of language difficulty Tony Lambton says Selwyn Lloyd introduced him to Khrushchev saying 'He's the best shot in England,' and the translator said 'Lord Lambton is to be shot tomorrow.' Khrushchev thought it quite normal but patted him on the shoulder kindly. — Charlotte Mosley

Everyone can err, but Stalin considered that he never erred, that he was always right. He never acknowledged to anyone that he made any mistake, large or small, despite the fact that he made not a few mistakes in the matter of theory and in his practical activity. — Nikita Khrushchev

The living will envy the dead. — Nikita Khrushchev

My arms are up to the elbows in blood. That is the most terrible thing that lies in my soul. — Nikita Khrushchev

When you are skinning your customers, you should leave some skin on to heal, so that you can skin them again. — Nikita Khrushchev

Of all cities in the United States I have seen, San Francisco is the most beautiful. — Nikita Khrushchev

Khrushchev reminds me of the tiger hunter who has picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger's skin long before he has caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas. — John F. Kennedy

N. S. Khrushchev established his supremacy in the U.S.S.R. after post-Stalinist alarums and excursions (1958-64). This admirable rough diamond, a believer in reform and peaceful coexistence, who incidentally emptied Stalin's concentration camps, dominated the international scene in the next few years. He was also perhaps the only peasant boy ever to rule a major state — Eric Hobsbawm

Historians are dangerous and capable of turning everything upside down. They have to be watched. — Nikita Khrushchev

The survivors (of a nuclear war) would envy the dead. — Nikita Khrushchev

I want to talk to these people because they stay in power and you change all the time. — Nikita Khrushchev

For a time I gave the appearance of defending Stalin. I didn't defend what he had done; the fact is, nobody could defend the things that Khrushchev revealed. — Tim Buck

You do not know, you cannot know, the difficulty of the life of a politician. It means every minute of the day or night, every ounce of your energy. There is no rest, no relaxation. Enjoyment? A politician does not know the meaning of the word. — Nikita Khrushchev

Cecilia sipped her tea and imagined herself going back through time and putting that Khrushchev in his place. — Liane Moriarty

Don't you have a machine that puts food into the mouth and pushes it down? — Nikita Khrushchev

He who cannot eat horsemeat need not do so. Let him eat pork. But he who cannot eat pork, let him eat horsemeat. It's simply a question of taste. — Nikita Khrushchev

No one is born a Communist ... in the Soviet Union farmers keep on looking in the barn for their horses even after they have given them to the collective. — Nikita Khrushchev

I worked at a factory owned by Germans, at coal pits owned by Frenchmen, and at a chemical plant owned by Belgians. There I discovered something about capitalists. They are all alike, whatever the nationality. All they wanted from me was the most work for the least money that kept me alive. So I became a communist. — Nikita Khrushchev

I happened to read recently a remark by the American nuclear physicist W. Davidson, who noted that the explosion of one hydrogen bomb releases a greater amount of energy than all the explosions set off by all countries in all wars known in the entire history of mankind. And he, apparently, is right. — Nikita Khrushchev

If you start throwing hedgehogs under me, I shall throw a couple of porcupines under you. — Nikita Khrushchev

Zhukov was the most successful commander of World War II, who fell from grace under Khrushchev, but never lost his place in the pantheon of Soviet heroes. — Georgy Zhukov

Berlin is the testicles of the West, every time I want the West to scream, I squeeze on Berlin. — Nikita Khrushchev

The main difference for the history of the world if I had been shot rather than Kennedy is that Onassis probably wouldn't have married Mrs Khrushchev. — Nikita Khrushchev

We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we've had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was our Hitler. — Seymour Hersh

Then the 1956 Peace Prize went to Eisenhower and Khrushchev for agreeing not to build the hydrogen bomb. That agreement was now also called the Szilard Treaty. Today the H-bomb was a threshold no one dared cross without exciting hostile moves by all other powers. — Gregory Benford

One of the major principles is that Soviet literature must be inseverably linked with the policy of the Communist party — Nikita Khrushchev

In a fight you don't stop to choose your cudgels. — Nikita Khrushchev

There was also the fact that sending a penniless writer to get $135 worth of beer was - as Khrushchev said of Nixon - 'like sending a goat to tend the cabbage'. — Hunter S. Thompson

We say the name of God, but that is only habit. — Nikita Khrushchev

In 1962, war was avoided by Khrushchev's willingness to accept Kennedy's hegemonic demands. — Noam Chomsky

If you feed the people just with revolutionary slogans they will listen today, they will listen tomorrow, they will listen the day after tomorrow, but on the fourth day they will say, "To hell with you." — Nikita Khrushchev

One of the ironic things," Kennedy observed to Norman Cousins in the spring of 1963, " ... is that Mr. Khrushchev and I occupy approximately the same political positions inside our governments. He would like to prevent a nuclear war but is under severe pressure from his hard-line crowd, which interprets every move in that direction as appeasement. I've got similar problems ... . The hard-liners in the Soviet Union and the United States feed on one another."8 — Robert F. Kennedy

You Americans are so gullible. No, you won't accept communism outright, but we'll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you'll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won't have to fight you. We'll so weaken your economy until you'll fall like overripe fruit into our hands. — Nikita Khrushchev

The John Birch Society is Communism's greatest ally. With its help we will divide and confuse the American people until they have lost faith in their Government, their nation has ceased to be a major world power, and their country is ripe for revolution. — Nikita Khrushchev

Here's the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn't have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America. — Barack Obama

Instead, so long as Kennedy lived and Khrushchev stayed in power, there was steady movement toward the relaxation of tension - the American University speech, the Limited Test Ban Treaty, the establishment of the "hotline" between the White House and the Kremlin. — Robert F. Kennedy

They pay little attention to what we say and prefer to read tea leaves. — Nikita Khrushchev

When all the world is socialist, Switzerland will have to remain capitalist, so that it can tell us the price of everything. — Nikita Khrushchev

America has been in existence for 150 years and this is the level she has reached. We have existed not quite 42 years and in another seven years we will be on the same level as America. When we catch you up, in passing you by, we will wave to you. — Nikita Khrushchev

We Jews continue to be amazed with the ease by which Christian Americans have fallen into our hands. While the naive Americans wait for Khrushchev to bury them, we have taught them to submit to our every demand. — Harold Wallace Rosenthal

What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying. — Nikita Khrushchev

Once you pledge, don't hedge. — Nikita Khrushchev

The dictatorship of the proletariat and the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist party are indispensable conditions for the triumph of the Socialist revolution and the building of Socialism. — Nikita Khrushchev

Do you think when two representatives holding diametrically opposing views get together and shake hands, the contradictions between our systems will simply melt away? What kind of a daydream is that? — Nikita Khrushchev

Without Spam, we wouldn't have been able to feed our army. — Nikita Khrushchev

Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any god there. — Nikita Khrushchev

I don't understand the music but I certainly understand the girl singer! — Nikita Khrushchev

Following his doctor's orders, Nikita (Khrushchev) has cut his drinking in half. He's leaving out the water. — Bob Hope

When Khrushchev asked whether his brass hats would guarantee that keeping the missiles in Cuba would not bring about nuclear war, they looked at him, he later told Norman Cousins of the Saturday Review, an informal emissary between Kennedy and Khrushchev, "as though I were out of my mind or, what was worse, a traitor. So I said to myself, 'To hell with these maniacs.'"6 — Robert F. Kennedy

Historians are dangerous people. They are capable of upsetting everything. — Nikita Khrushchev

They say that the Soviet delegates smile. That smile is genuine. It is not artificial. We wish to live in peace, tranquility. But if anyone believes that our smiles involve abandonment of the teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin he deceives himself poorly. Those who wait for that must wait until a shrimp learns to whistle. — Nikita Khrushchev

I know what I say at times is not very diplomatic. — Nikita Khrushchev

You know, it's very clear, as one looks back on history again of the Cold War that, following the crisis in Cuba, following the Khrushchev - beating down of Jack Kennedy in Vienna, that President Kennedy believed that we had to join the battle for the Third World, and the next crisis that developed in that regards was Vietnam. — Alexander Haig

Let there be more corn and more meat and let there be no hydrogen bombs at all. — Nikita Khrushchev

No, Mr. Khrushchev, you may not have a wall. It will not prove that communism works. It will not work out well at all. Now, look, I agree capitalism isn't the be-all and end-all! Let me show you my last credit card bill. But you really need to put your thinking cap back on. — Liane Moriarty

Khrushchev first denounced Stalin's purges at the Soviet Communist Party's 20th Congress. After his dramatic speech, someone in the audience shouted out, asking what Khrushchev had been doing at the time. Khrushchev responded by asking the questioner to please stand up and identify himself. The audience remained silent. Khrushchev replied: "That is what I did, too. — Avinash K. Dixit

Whether we are Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheists, we must first learn to forget our differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the man. If the late President Kennedy could get together with Khrushchev and exchange some wheat, we certainly have more in common with each other than Kennedy and Khrushchev had with each other. — Malcolm X

Unlike the American President's chronic problem of finding ways to give away the country's permanent economic surplus, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's was the problem of rationing permanent scarcity. — Elie Abel

The more bombers, the less room for doves of peace. — Nikita Khrushchev

Revolutions are not made for export. — Nikita Khrushchev

The one who loses his head no longer cares about his hair. — Nikita Khrushchev

I don't like the life here in New York. There is no greenery. It would make a stone sick. — Nikita Khrushchev

The press is our chief ideological weapon. — Nikita Khrushchev

In 1954 the gulag at Kengir witnessed an uprising by Christian and Muslim prisoners. The guards were driven out, and for forty days worship was freely practiced in the camp. Solzhenitsyn later documented the atmosphere of elation and idealism which prevailed in this doomed island of faith: the Muslims put on turbans and robes again, and 'the grey-black camp was a blaze of color'. The Chechens made kites from which they showered the neighboring villages with messages about the evils of the atheist system. Many marriages were celebrated. Survivors recall the forty days as a testimony to a possible way of living which had been suffocated by dreary unbelief. Delight in the present, and the knowledge of heaven outweighed the awareness of Khrushchev's inevitable revenge. The rebels were crushed under the attacks of tanks, but in the long term, this same spiritual outweighing insured the atheist dystopia's downfall. — Abdal Hakim Murad

The United States now sleeps under a Soviet moon — Nikita Khrushchev

President Kennedy didn't negotiate out of the Cuban missile crisis simply because he and Khrushchev got along well. Khrushchev didn't have the cards. — Colin Powell

What innocence, may I ask, is being played here when it is known that this virtuous damsel has already got a dozen illegitimate children? — Nikita Khrushchev

I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today. — Robert McNamara

Any fool can start a war, and once he's done so, even the wisest of men are helpless to stop it - especially if it's a nuclear war. — Nikita Khrushchev

When it comes to combating imperialism we are all Stalinists. — Nikita Khrushchev

The USA and USSR will only agree when shrimps learn to fly. — Nikita Khrushchev

In the future, if nuclear weapons are unleashed there will be no front and no rear. — Nikita Khrushchev

President Roosevelt proved that a President could serve for life. Truman proved that anyone could be elected. Eisenhower proved that your country can be run without a President. — Nikita Khrushchev

Ladies and Gentlemen, we deem it the central revelation of Western experience that man cannot ineradicably stain himself, for the wells of regeneration are infinitely deep. No temple has ever been so profaned that it cannot be purified; no man is ever truly lost; no nation is irrevocably dishonored. Khrushchev cannot take permanent advantage of our temporary disadvantage, for it is the West he is fighting. And in the West there lie, however encysted, the ultimate resources, which are moral in nature. Khrushchev is not aware that the gates of hell shall not prevail against us. Even out of the depths of despair, we take heart in the knowledge that it cannot matter how deep we fall, for there is always hope. In the end, we will bury him. — William F. Buckley Jr.

No matter how humble a man's beginnings, he achieves the stature of the office to which he is elected. — Nikita Khrushchev

Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet. — Barack Obama

Support by United States rulers is rather in the nature of the support that the rope gives to a hanged man. — Nikita Khrushchev

Bombs do not choose. They will hit everything. — Nikita Khrushchev

Economics is a subject that does not greatly respect one's wishes. — Nikita Khrushchev

I would have skipped the following day if I could have. I ddin't even like Disney World. I was, in fact, slightly afraid of it. When Khrushchev visited Disneyland in 1959, he wasn't allowed in. It was said that the American authorities couldn't guarantee his safety inside. And whatever else Khrushchev was, I would have backed him against an infantry division. — Austin Grossman

We do not have to invade the United States, we will destroy you from within. — Nikita Khrushchev

If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf. — Nikita Khrushchev

Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all — Nikita Khrushchev

To the voters in 1960, the name Nikita Khrushchev carried great emotional significance. To these students, he sounded like just another hockey player. — Leonard Mlodinow