A Quote by Tom Clancy

Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.

Tom Clancy

Quote Topics

Closest Closest Thing Hockey Ice Ice Hockey Permitted Religion Soviet Soviet Union Thing Union

Quote Author

Tom Clancy
American - Novelist
April 12, 1947 - October 1, 2013

What I found interesting about Slava Fetisov was that he went through three different generations of Soviet hockey. In the late 70's, he experienced the Miracle on Ice, and then in the 80's became with his teammates the Russian Five, the most dominant team in the history of hockey, and then helped bring down the hockey system when the Soviet Union collapsed and became one of the first players to play in the NHL, and then ultimately came back to Russia.

Gabe Polsky

Growing up, I didn't know very much about my heritage and the Soviet Union and things of that nature. But when I saw the Soviet Union play hockey for the first time, to me, it was profound.

Gabe Polsky

When I looked into the story of Soviet hockey and its players, I realized that it has nothing to do with hockey. It was a larger story using hockey as a window into the story of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian people, with friendships and betrayals, paranoia and oppression, and the meaning of sports to people and nations around the world, and how sports was used as a political tool.

Gabe Polsky

This much I would say: Socialism has failed all over the world. In the eighties, I would hear every day that there is no inflation in the Soviet Union, there is no poverty in the Soviet Union, there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union. And now we find that, due to Socialism, there is no Soviet Union!

Subramanian Swamy

One ironic thing is that although (the Soviet Union) was one of the most oppressive systems, with no respect for the individual, it somehow produced the freest hockey on the planet. These guys, when they got on the ice, it was like watching jazz. They could do anything. I find that a paradox. It's interesting because I think the North American style was a lot less free. It was not encouraged to be creative.

Gabe Polsky

Was the Soviet Union reformable? I would say no. They said, 'Okay, the Soviet Union isn't working.' They would say, 'No, it's great. We just need democracy, political pluralism, private property.' And then there was no Soviet Union. The European Union is the same.

Marine Le Pen

The point is, once they have a missile that can hit the United States, we are now back in the kind of game we used to worry about with the Soviet Union, only the Soviet Union was more mature about this whole thing than I think the North Koreans will be.

Lawrence Eagleburger

Soviet mathematics was particularly good in the second half of the 20th century, basically because of the arms race, because the Soviet Union realized... World War II created the conditions for the Soviet Union to become a superpower.

Masha Gessen

I have six brothers and one sister. I grew up playing ice hockey, a total tomboy, and that’s what I thought I was going to do – be an ice hockey player.

Nicola Peltz

I have six brothers and one sister. I grew up playing ice hockey, a total tomboy, and that's what I thought I was going to do - be an ice-hockey player.

Nicola Peltz

When I was 5, I'm like,' I'm doing this,' whether there's women's ice hockey, men's ice hockey, whatever it was in my future.

Hilary Knight

My parents are from the former Soviet Union, from Ukraine, and I grew up wanting to be a professional hockey player.

Gabe Polsky

Back in 1956, we signed a treaty and surprisingly it was ratified both by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and the Japanese Parliament. But then Japan refused to implement it and after that the Soviet Union also, so to say, nullified all the agreements reached within the framework of the treaty.