Cold War Paranoia Quotes

The idea of a bowed and terrified liberal minority during McCarthy's 'reign of terror' is poppycock. Then as now, all elite opinion was against McCarthy.

I don't see how otherwise well adjusted people can possibly ignore the fact that [Richard] Nixon is a dedicated internationalist who belongs to the same organization as Senator Jacob Javits and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. The organization I mean is the Communist-accommodating Council on Foreign Relations whose aims and purposes ... are parallel to the long-range plans of the International Communist Conspiracy.

John F. Kennedy, who seized the White House from Richard Nixon in a frenzied campaign that turned a whole generation of young Americans into political junkies, got shot in the head for his efforts, murdered in Dallas by some hapless geek named Oswald who worked for either Castro, the mob, Jimmy Hoffa, the CIA, his dominatrix landlady or the odious, degenerate FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. The list is long and crazy - maybe Marilyn Monroe's first husband fired those shots from the grassy knoll. Who knows?

'Dr. Strangelove' was and is one of my favorite movies ever, and I just can't believe they actually blew up the world after that.

...I believed passionately that Communists were a race of horned men who divided their time equally between the burning of Nancy Drew books and the devising of a plan of nuclear attack that would land the largest and most lethal bomb squarely upon the third-grade class of Thomas Jefferson School in Morristown, New Jersey.

Audience response to The Man From U.N.C.L.E. back in the '60s - well, I was frankly surprised by the show's success and the attendant publicity for David and myself.

And there was a deeper, less visible effect of the Truman loyalty program. Seeing its consequences for certain individuals and fearing its intrusion on their own lives, many in the government sought protection by strongly asserting their anti-Communism. In the public action that ensued, policy was based not on reality but, instinctively or deliberately, on personal caution...Those who urged a militant and sometimes military anti-Communism were considered sound, trustworthy and personally safe; those who questioned such a course were politically unsafe, possible even slightly disloyal.

So much of the bitterness that the term 'McCarthyism' evokes refers to the probe begun in New Jersey in the summer of 1953 - both in the laboratories of Fort Monmouth and in the surrounding communities of Red Bank and Belmar, where some of the best scientists and engineers in America worked.

Stanley Kubrick went with his gut feeling: he directed 'Dr. Strangelove' as a black comedy. The film is routinely described as a masterpiece.

I generally like very visually striking films. I love a lot of Stanley Kubrick's films. I would have to say 'Dr. Strangelove', which of course has got resonance in 'Watchmen'. It's a favorite movie of mine.

My boyfriend and I just got a projector, so we've been screening movies on the roof and projecting them against the wall next door. The last one we did, the theme was, 'The Russians are coming.' So we screened 'Red Dawn' and 'Top Gun.'

'Red Dawn' was very resonant with a lot of people - they love that movie. I always thought it was a little hysterical.