Kitchen Debate
The Kitchen Debate was an impromptu debate (through interpreters) between Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, on July 24, 1959.
Quotes
- Nixon: There are some instances where you may be ahead of us, for example in the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer space. And there may be instances, for example color television, where we are ahead of you...
- Khrushchev: In what are they ahead of us? Wrong! Wrong! We are ahead of you in rockets as well as in the other technique. I do not capitulate.
- Khrushchev: If I do not know everything, then I would say that you know nothing about communism; nothing except fear of it.
- Khrushchev: Let us compete. The system that will give the people more goods will be the better system, and victorious.
- Nixon: To me you are strong and we are strong. In some ways, you are stronger. In others, we are stronger. We are both strong not only from the standpoint of weapons but from the standpoint of will and spirit. Neither should use that strength to put the other in a position where he in effect has an ultimatum. In this day and age that misses the point. With modern weapons it does not make any difference if war comes. We both have had it.
- Khrushchev: For the fourth time I have to say I cannot recognize my friend Mr. Nixon. If all Americans agree with you then who don't we agree [with]? This is what we want.