Cold War: Cuban Missile Crisis to Detente Quotes
They Said It
| "Ich bin ein Berliner." - John F. Kennedy, speech in Berlin, 19638 (Psst: we have an entire learning guide for this speech.) |
| "We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked." - Secretary of State Dean Rusk, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, 19629 |
| "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty. [...] Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us. [...] And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." - John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, 196110 |
| "The week that changed the world." - Richard M. Nixon, on his visit to China, 197211 |
| "It's not mad! Mutual Assured Destruction is the foundation of deterrence." - Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara12 |
| "It was a perfectly beautiful night, as fall nights are in Washington. I walked out of the president's Oval Office, and as I walked out, I thought I might never live to see another Saturday night." - Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, recalling the Cuban Missile Crisis13 |