“Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.”

“Perhaps we didn't win anyway. (the Cold War) Perhaps they just lost. Or perhaps, without the bonds of ideological conflict to restrain us any more, our troubles are just beginning.”

“You're history, Donohue. You think countries run the fucking world! Go back to fucking Sunday school. It's 'God save our multinational' they're singing these days.”

“Look... we're getting to be old men, and we've spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another's systems. I can see through Eastern values just as you can see through our Western ones. Both of us, I am sure, have experienced ad nauseam the technical satisfactions of this wretched war. But now your own side is going to shoot you. Don't you think it's time to recognise that there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?”

“There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.”

“A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.”

“Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.”