Michael Dobbs · 384 pages
Rating: (2.5K votes)
“The captain of the Lowry tried a new approach. He assembled the destroyer’s jazz band on deck, and told them to play some music. Strains of Yankee Doodle floated across the ocean, followed by a boogie-woogie number. The Americans thought they could see a smile on the face of one of the sailors. They asked if there was any particular tune he would like to hear. The Soviet sailor did not respond. The”
― Michael Dobbs, quote from One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
“The most enduring lesson of the Cuban missile crisis is that, in a world with nuclear weapons, a classic military victory is an illusion. Communism was not defeated militarily; it was defeated economically, culturally, and ideologically. Khrushchev’s successors were unable to provide their own people with a basic level of material prosperity and spiritual fulfillment. They lost the war of ideas. In the end, as I have argued in Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, communism defeated itself.”
― Michael Dobbs, quote from One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
“JFK's great virtue, and the essential difference between him and George W. Bush, was that he had an instinctive appreciation for the chaotic forces of history.”
― Michael Dobbs, quote from One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
“Bismarck defined political intuition as the ability to hear, before anybody else, “the distant hoofbeats of history.”
― Michael Dobbs, quote from One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
“The closest contact they had with the enemy was a playful sign that boasted: “Worldwide delivery in 30 minutes or less—or your next one is free.” Nuclear apocalypse was as mundane as delivering pizza.”
― Michael Dobbs, quote from One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
“Khrushchev had been ready to settle for a”
― Michael Dobbs, quote from One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
“There's a thin line between love and hate. Maybe you're confusing your emotions.”
― Simone Elkeles, quote from Perfect Chemistry
“Places do not lose their identity, however far one travels. It is the heart that begins to erode over time. The face in the hotel mirror seems blurred some mornings, as if by too many casual looks. By ten the sheets will be laundered, the carpet swept. The names on the hotel registers change as we pass. We leave no trace as we pass on. Ghostlike, we cast no shadow.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Chocolat
“The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.”
― Alan Paton, quote from Cry, the Beloved Country
“Sarcasm doesn't appear to work on him. If that's true, I'm in trouble: It's my normal mode of communication.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The 5th Wave
“It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Snow Crash
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