Vladimir Putin

I swim almost every day, a thousand meters.

The state security bodies should not be seen as an institution that works against society and the state; one needs to understand what makes them work against their own people.

Construction of the first gas pipeline system was started during the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, and for all those years, from the 1960s until this day, Russia has been fulfilling its contract obligations in a very consistent and reliable way, regardless of the political situation.

Russia and China are very natural partners. We are neighbors with an immense common border.

Overall, we are moving in the right direction. We have started on the trajectory toward robust economic growth in Russia. Yes, this growth is humble, small, but it is also not a fall. Growth was at 1.5 percent last year.

We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them.

Debates, I hate.

I was in Moscow recently and I spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not have been nicer, and we had a tremendous success.

Many countries are so weak that they can’t really solve their internal problems in the face of US power; they can’t even control their own wealthy. Their rich have virtually no social obligations-they don’t pay taxes and don’t keep their money in the country.

We won the Electoral College by a lot: 306 to 223, I believe. And that was a well-fought — that was a well-fought battle. We did a great job.

Let’s just be smart this time. I’m looking for smart.

Tough love is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else.

If by ‘intellectual’ you mean people who are a special class who are in the business of imposing thoughts and forming ideas for people in power, and telling people what they should believe…they’re really more a kind of secular priesthood, whose task it is to uphold the doctrinal truths of the society. And the population SHOULD be anti-intellectual in that repect.

When the interests of the privileged and powerful are the guiding commitment of both political factions, people who do not share these interests tend to stay home.

All political theories assume…that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ…in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.

We have no guns – we have only stones, boxes of matches and petrol. Together, hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.

These are just samples of the real lives of Trump supporters, who are led to believe that Trump will do something to remedy their plight, though the merest look at his fiscal and other proposals demonstrates the opposite — posing a task for activists who hope to fend off the worst and to advance desperately needed changes..

I believe all people are good. Some just do bad things. I had a teacher – God bless him, he died a few years ago -Luther H. Henson. I was a student of his at the time I lost my mother. He was my one person that seemed like anything I wanted to know, I could ask him and he’d give me an answer that was right. He told me, ‘There’ll come a time when people won’t judge you by your color; they’ll judge you by your deeds; how you act and how you treat people.’ Hearing professor Henson say that made me think, and I guess sort of toe the line a little bit more. And later on I heard Dr. King say, ‘I have a dream, where you’ll be judged not by the colour of the skin…’ Of course, I’d been a man for years when Dr. King came along, but it hit me hard because it strengthened for me what prof Henson had already said when I was a boy.

I’m going to be so much better a president for having been at the CIA that you’re not going to believe it.

You cannot reform your society or institution without opening your mind.

The Obama policies [2016] are to try to pressure Mexico to keep Central American immigrants from coming anywhere near us. Who are the Central American immigrants? These are people fleeing from the wreckage left by US government policies.