Vladimir Putin

I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence.

We are not going to close anything… I also worked in the security services and know it is easiest to ban, and harder to find civilized solutions. Therefore, I’m going to urge all my colleagues to take this route, the route of security and law enforcement agencies using modern methods to combat offences, including terrorism, without restricting freedoms including on the Internet.

Europeans are dying out. Don’t you understand that? And same-sex marriages don’t produce children. Do you want to survive by drawing migrants? But society cannot adapt so many migrants.

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this.

Russia does not and cannot have any political choice but democracy. I want to say, and even stress, that we share those universal democratic principles taken around the whole world.

You must obey the law, always, not only when they grab you by your special place.

Trumpism is one of many manifestations of the effects of the neoliberal policies of the past generation. These have led to extreme concentration of wealth along with stagnation for the majority.

If you’ve taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that its purpose? No it’s not.

That government is best which governs least.

There was no collusion. Everybody knows there was no collusion.

The government appears to be waiting for instructions from President Donald Trump on how to proceed, britain should press for an independent U.N.-led investigation of last weekend’s horrific chemical weapons attack so that those responsible can be held to account.

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.

I seemed to be in a minority on every subject. Every argument that came up, every debate that came up, I was in a minority of one usually, sometimes two. That was quite character forming.

We challenge the narrative that only the individual matters, and the collective is irrelevant, instead we say the common good is the aspiration of all of us.

Obviously these [white-guard] emigres enjoy the right of asylum existing also in the U.S. So far as we are concerned we would never tolerate a single terrorist in our territory regardless against whom he would contemplate his crimes. Apparently the right of asylum receives broader interpretation in the U.S.A. than in our country.

The internet is an élite organization; most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call.

The U.S. and Britain are incapable of controlling all of Iraq.

If you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on the grounds that they have offended you, you have crossed a line to stand alongside tyrants who imprison, torture and kill on exactly the same justifications.

No one should be held back from realising their potential by fears that they will not be able to afford to go to university or that they will graduate with unmanageable levels of debt.

I cannot forgive him [Nelson Mandela] for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with his jailer De Klerk. Hand in hand they went. Do you think De Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart? He had to. The times dictated it, the world had changed.

I think George W. Bush has a warm, engaging personality. But, you know, the presidency is more than just a popularity contest.