#russia

We have a chance to wind down and expedite the removal of 96 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. What an achievement it would be, if at the end of the next administration, we could say that the nuclear arsenals of both Russia and the United States had been reduced to the barest minimums. ↗

— Dianne Feinstein

#administration #arsenals #been #both #chance

There's no way out," he announced with satisfaction, "and no amount of wishful dreaming will produce one. The demon won't go back in its bottle, the face-off is for ever, the embrace gets tighter and the toys cleverer with every generation, and there's no such thing for either side as enough security. Not for the main players, not for the nasty little newcomers who each year run themselves up a suitcase bomb and join the club. We get tired of believing that, because we're human. We may even con ourselves into believing the threat has gone away. It never will. Never, never, never." "So, who'll save us then, Walt?" Barley asked. "You and Nedsky?" "Vanity, if anything will, which I doubt," Walter retorted. "No leader wants to go down in history as the ass who destroyed his country in an afternoon. And funk, I suppose. Most of our gallant politicians do have a narcissistic objection to suicide, thank God. ↗

— John le Carré

#nuclear-weapons #russia #spy #war #dreams

I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn't speak any Russian. He didn't care whether I could understand what they were saying; he wanted me to make up dialogue. ↗

— Francis Ford Coppola

#care #corman #could #dialogue #english

Finally Germany's attack on Russia seemed to confirm that Russia was not shirking and was prepared to carry out a foreign policy with the risk of war with Germany. ↗

— Klaus Fuchs

#carry #confirm #finally #foreign #foreign policy

There is nobody I know by name who is concerned with collecting information for the Russian authorities. There are people whom I know by sight whom I trusted with my life. ↗

— Klaus Fuchs

#collecting #concerned #i #information #know

If Russians knew how to read, they would write me off. ↗

— Catherine the Great

#knew #me #off #read #russians

The enchanted world arising out of the dim mists of the past, into which he just stepped, quivered-and disappeared. ↗

— Ivan Turgenev

#point-of-view #russia #intelligence

Life is like invading Russia. A blitz start, massed shakos, plumes dancing like a flustered henhouse; a period of svelte progress recorded in ebullient despatches as the enemy falls back; then the beginning of a long, morale-sapping trudge with rations getting shorter and the first snowflakes upon your face. The enemy burns Moscow and you yield to General January, whose fingernails are very icicles. Bitter retreat. Harrying Cossacks. Eventually you fall beneath a boy-gunner's grapeshot while crossing some Polish river not even marked on your general's map. ↗

— Julian Barnes

#life #life

This marriage had resulted from impulse: he had seen her on a high-flying swing at Tsarkoe Selo and her skirt, flared by the breeze, had exposed her ankles; he had proposed the following day. ↗

— Robert K. Massie

#nonfiction #royalty #russia #marriage

The train, I was later told by my mother, only had about ten carriages to it, and there were hundreds of people fighting to get on. I don’t think anybody knew where the train was going, only that it was leaving Strausberg and would take us away from the Russians, who were now arriving on the far end of the platform. Some German SS soldiers and Police were shooting at the Russian troops, and many people – men, women and children – were hit by the flying bullets. ↗

— Alfred Nestor

#alfred-nestor #author-alfred-nestor #hitler #hitler-s-germany #nazi-party