Category Archives: Quotations Freedom

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, …

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. Orson Welles
The Third Man

‘We do have inveterate antipathy for communism — or paranoia as I like to put it,’ young Gore wrote to his father. He went on to consider the policy implications of this American Cold War obsession. ‘My own belief is that this form of psychological ailment — in this case a national — leads the victim to actually create the thing which is feared the most. It strikes me that this is precisely what the U.S. has been doing. Creating — and if not creating, energetically supporting — fascist, totalitarian regimes in the name of fighting totalitarianism. Greece, South Vietnam, a good deal of Latin America. For me, the best example of all is the U.S. Army.’ Al Gore
The New Yorker, 11/28/94