A Quote by Dave Barry

Nobody in the United States knows what either a "meter" or a "kilogram" is. The whole reason why we fought the Cold War was so we wouldn't have to learn the metric system.

Dave Barry

Quote Topics

Cold Cold War Either Fought Knows Learn Meter Metric Metric System Nobody Reason Reason Why States System United United States War Whole Why

Quote Author

Dave Barry
American - Journalist
Born: July 3, 1947

What is the great fear of the United States? That an Eastern power will build a navy to challenge us. How do you keep them from doing that? Keep them at each other's throats so they don't have any money to do this. This is why we fought the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War.

George Friedman

Some people cling to the belief that the Civil War was fought over states' rights. But history is not on their side. We cannot continue to glorify a war against the United States of America fought in the defense of slavery.

Roy Cooper

Because the US has control of the sea. Because the US has built up its wealth. Because the US is the only country in the world really not to have a war fought on its territory since the time of the Civil War ... Therefore we can afford mistakes that would kill other countries. And therefore we can take risks that they can't ... the core answer to why the United States is like this is we didn't fight World War I and World War II and the Cold War here.

George Friedman

My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn't work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious.

Fidel Castro

This system, built on free markets, free trade and free peoples and American protection, that's what got us from the end of World War II to the extraordinary events of the end of the Cold War and a system that was one of prosperity and peace for a lot of people, including for the United States.

Condoleezza Rice

Of course Evil's afoot. If it had switched to the metric system it'd be up to a meter by now.

Jim Butcher

There was a sound like a human yawn, and then the skull turned slightly toward me and asked, "What's up, boss?" "Evil's afoot." "Well, sure," Bob said, "because it refuses to learn the metric system. Otherwise it'd be up to a meter by now.

Jim Butcher

The cold war was the longest war in United States history. Because of the nuclear capabilities of our enemy it was the most dangerous conflict our country ever faced. Those that won this war did so in obscurity. Those that gave their lives in the cold war have never been properly honored.

Harry Reid

An old joke has an Oxford professor meeting an American former graduate student and asking him what he's working on these days. 'My thesis is on the survival of the class system in the United States.' 'Oh really, that's interesting: one didn't think there was a class system in the United States.' 'Nobody does. That's how it survives.

Christopher Hitchens

Since the end of the World War II, the United States has fought three "small" wars...we lost all three of them and for the same reason-hubris.

Andrew Greeley

Fascism is a worldwide disease. Its greatest threat to the United States will come after the war, either via Latin America or within the United States itself.

Henry A. Wallace

Nobody knows this, but my hero is Che Guevara. Why? Because he was magic. He was a hero. Che resisted. He fought against the system.

Ko Wen-je

Very few people know that there is a whole school of historians that have existed in the United States from the 1940s and the early '50s that were revisionists. They were attacking the whole basis of the history of the Cold War. People like D.F. Fleming, William Appleman Williams.

Oliver Stone

The trouble with the First World War, for example, is that people think war was inevitable, but I don't agree. If you look at the Cold War, you could argue that a war was bound to happen between the Soviet Union and its allies and the United States and its allies, but it didn't.

Margaret MacMillan

Today people can see and protest all the different interests that want war to happen, the people it financially benefits. The First World War wasn't fought for that reason. The Second World War wasn't fought for that reason. Your entire country and way of life could be overtaken.