Bashar al Assad

Despite the ethnic diversity within each nation, the social fabric of the region by and large is one.

I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country.

The Israeli lobby has clout in the U.S., which means that re-arranging the region and controlling its resources one way or another, will serve Israel through its control over the American administration.

Since its very inception, Israel has been a threat.

Hizbullah is not a militia.

No doubt that the U.S. is a super-power capable of conquering a relatively small country, but is it able to control it?

Europe has found itself confronted with fresh challenges – challenges of a global character, the nature of which is directly connected with changes in the international climate and the difficulties of seeking new models for co-operation.

It’s important to remember that the constitutional system was not designed in the first place to defend the rights of people. Rather, the rights of people had to be balanced, as Madison put it, against what he called ‘the rights of property.’

But do the governors themselves need that? Are they ready to line up under the vertikal? They are. After all, the governors are part of the country, and they also suffer from management weaknesses. Not everyone is going to like everything. You can’t please everybody, but you can find some common approaches. I was also interested in learning more about the country. I had only ever worked in St. Petersburg, apart from the time I spent abroad. . . . Of course, my seven years of experience in Peter was good experience, both administrative and managerial. But Peter isn’t the whole country. I wanted to travel and see things. So, why did you drop that interesting job and go to work as director of the FSB? Do you have some affinity for the agencies? No. I wasn’t asked whether or not I wanted to go, and they had given me no inkling that I was even being considered for such an appointment. The president simply signed a decree. . . .

The Best Way to teach your kids about taxes is by eating 30% of their ice cream!

When [Lenin] became the leader, he didn’t waste much time, and Trotsky helped him, in instituting a pretty repressive regime with the basic elements of Stalinism. They moved pretty quickly to dismantle most of the organs of popular power.

Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things.

The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its own citizens. Any government that fails to do so is a government unworthy to lead.

Russia does not want confrontation of any kind. And we will not take part in any kind of ‘holy alliance.’

We are of course a nation of differences. Those differences don’t make us weak. They’re the source of our strength.

As in the past, the costs and risks of the coming phases of the industrial economy were to be socialized, with eventual profits privatized …

And [Saudi Arabia] is strongly backed by the United States and its allies, Britain and France. Reason? It’s got a lot of oil. It’s got a lot of money. You can sell them a lot of arms, I think tens of billions of dollars of arms.

We need not stride resolutely towards catastrophe, merely because those are the marching orders.

I prefer to be in the grave in Colombia than in a jail cell in the United States.

Our country is in serious trouble. We don’t have victories any more. We used to have victories but [now] we don’t have them. When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let’s say, China, in a trade deal? They kill us. I beat China all the time. All the time.

Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the President and do wonders for your performance.