A Quote by Simon Sebag Montefiore

When we were in school, we were told that Stalin was a madman who got control of Europe, which teaches you nothing. — © Simon Sebag Montefiore
When we were in school, we were told that Stalin was a madman who got control of Europe, which teaches you nothing.
We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.
Poland, of course, was the key country. I remember Stalin telling me that the plains of Poland were the invasion route of Europe to Russia and always had been, and therefore he had to control Poland.
We got a wonderful present from Stalin and Hitler that they never meant to give us. We were immune for 60 years or so to aggression, racism and militarism. They made us partly immune to these things. Now it appears this Stalin-Hitler present has reached its expiration date. We were spoiled by this. So maybe we are just emerging out of a relatively golden age.
I only worked theater jobs, but they were all really silly when I first graduated. I was a line monitor at 'Spamalot,' which means I got there at 8 A.M. and told people how much the tickets were for standing room. I was an NYU Medical School fake patient, to teach doctors how to talk to patients.
When I was in Hungary in December I was looking at student films and I could not tell which ones were shot on film and which ones were shot digitally. I think that is because the filmmakers in Europe go to four years of film school and learn the techniques.
Nothing would be better today if Europe were divided or smaller. Today we have to say loud and clear that the crises, which have affected Europe cannot serve as a pretext for its disintegration. A mini-Europe would be the worst response to the maxi problems we have to face.
When you're moaning, all you are doing is focusing on things that were not in your control, at least you are not exploring whether they were in your control, which is bad. You're just focusing on the one piece of bad variance that happened. There's nothing productive that comes from it.
My parents were fairly laid-back, but there were certain things about which they were very strict. My brother and I were told never to turn away a person in need. And it didn't matter what we thought of their motives, whether they were truly in need or not.
My television teaches me that everything was wonderful in the Soviet Union. According to the programs I watch, the KGB and apparatchiks were angels, and the Stalin era was so festive that the heroes of the day must still be celebrated today.
There's no question that Stalin broke the agreements made at Yalta completely about elections that were supposed to be held immediately in Poland, and Eastern Europe was plunged into slavery as a consequence.
Nothing spooky or terrible happened on set, but we were told to say it had. We were giving a press conference and the writers were going on about these terrible things that supposedly happened while we were filming.
Renaissance or the reawakening of Europe. And, and this reawakening actually involved an era during which the people of Europe, who were coming out of the Dark Ages, were then adopting the value system of the people in the East, in the, of the oriental society.
We make sure we have total artistic control with our albums. We were working with Interscope Records, and they had a hard time with us having all the control. So when we signed with Warner Bros., we told them we would be working hands-on with our producer, and they were cool with it.
My family is Chinese-Taiwanese. I'm from Richmond, Virginia. The community in which I grew up was pretty white. The storybooks you got at school featured white children and an animal, or animals, and as you got older, the novels you were assigned were about, like, the problems of white boys and their dogs.
A lot of players were going to Europe, but there were always stories of teams not being able to pay, and the players and girls were stuck with no money for airfare to come home. So I got a nice contract from Japan and decided to play there.
Once, in high school, on a field trip away from school, some girls brought razors to shave their legs and threw them at me and told me to kill myself. But they were all insecure. They were angry, snapping at everybody.
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