The Best of Notable Quotables; December 24, 1990

Gennadi Gerasimov Newspeak Award

"Free at last, the temptation is to exercise all that freedom -- fully, quickly and sometimes unwisely. Often, it means biting the hand that freed and fed you. Lithuania is the latest and most ludicrous example....There is little more logic to Lithuania eing permitted to unilaterally and unlawfully declare its independence from the USSR than there would be for Texas to secede from the USA. Both were grabbed during a war. But both owe much to their modern-day mother country. Gorby has a right to feel livid about Lithuania. The way you might feel about a runaway child, tempted to beat him within an inch of his life."

-- USA Today founder Al Neuharth in an April 20 column.

Runners-Up:

"Yes, somehow, Soviet citizens are freer these days: freer to kill one another, freer to hate Jews, freer to express themselves...But doing away with totalitarianism and adding a dash of democracy seems an unlikely cure for what ails the Soviet system."

-- CBS This Morning co-host Harry Smith, February 9.

"Many Soviets viewing the current chaos and nationalist unrest under Gorbachev look back almost longingly to the era of brutal order under Stalin."

-- Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, February 11.

"Soviet people have become accustomed to security if nothing else. Life isn’t good here, but people don’t go hungry, homeless; a job has always been guaranteed. Now all socialist bets are off. A market economy looms, and the social contract that has held Soviet society together for 72 years no longer applies. The people seem baffled, disappointed, let down. Many don’t like the prospect of their nation becoming just another capitalist machine."

-- CNN Moscow reporter Steve Hurst on PrimeNews, May 24.

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