Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes

There used to be this country called the Soviet Union; it's not there anymore. Our technology was better than theirs.

The Cold War isn't thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn't sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting.

The Cold War is Over

The unthinkable occurred: two communist countries went to war with each other.

Anyone who doesn't regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.

The Cold War didn't end. It was won.

Building up the arms did not cause the fall of Eastern Europe.

Nobody thought the Soviet Union would collapse; it was a shock for everyone.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, people thought I wasn't funny anymore.

What did in the Soviet Union was the Soviet Union.

My feeling is that it's a misreading of history to say that, as the Reagan supporters do, that Reagan won the Cold War.

With his trademark courage and conviction, President Reagan led us out of the Cold War, spreading his vision of freedom, resulting in the release of millions of people from the yoke of communism.

Sometimes people ask me why I began perestroika. Were the causes basically domestic or foreign? The domestic reasons were undoubtedly the main ones, but the danger of nuclear war was so serious that it was a no less significant factor.

Twenty years ago, I said there was going to be something that would stop the Soviet Union from taking over the world. And now we see that the Soviet Union has been stopped, through its own disintegration.

If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.

Reagan did not wait out the Soviets; he beat them.

I have very fond memories of the '80s; they were very formative years for me. I certainly remember the Cold War. It was a closer doorstep for the Brits than the Americans, so it was a very real and palpable threat at the time.

I left Gorbachev's office thinking that everything about him was outsized: his achievements, his mistakes, and, now, his vanity and bitterness.

On March 11, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union, and within a few weeks the full-scale reformation he attempted to carry out both inside his country and in its cold war relations with the West, particularly the United States, began to unfold.

The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.

Now we are in a period which I can characterize as a cold peace.

The Cold War did end in the victory of one side and in the defeat of the other. This reality cannot be denied, despite the understandable sensitivities that such a conclusion provokes among the tenderhearted in the West and some of the former leaders of the defeated side.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.

The Cold War has ended for America.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Reagan and Thatcher displayed Churchillian magnanimity towards Gorbachev's broken nation. Relations were never better. There was no triumphalism.