Vladimir Putin

With regards to big business, I spoke about this a few years ago at one of the public meetings with our business leaders. I warned them that this situation, which we see today, could develop. I warned them about this and recommended at the time that our business keeps its capital in Russia.

How can a bureaucrat or a politician be trusted if he says loud words for the sake of Russia’s good while trying to take his funds, his money abroad?

The Russian parliament has condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Even if we do not always agree on every aspect, nobody should take this as an excuse to declare us as enemies.

Despite all the achievements of civilisation, the human being is still one of the most vulnerable creatures on earth.

Export in technical equipment is growing, which shows that some structural changes are going on in the economy. Export of agricultural produce, at 20 billion last year, was higher than defense exports, which were at 15 billion.

The U.S. government played a significant role [in the 1965 Indonesian genocide] by supplying the names of thousands of Communist Party leaders to the Indonesian army, which hunted down the leftists and killed them, former U.S. diplomats say…

I think we should talk about what the objectives of the party are, whether that’s restoring the Clause Four as it was originally written or it’s a different one, but I think we shouldn’t shy away from public participation, public investment in industry, i would want us to have a set of objectives which does include public ownership of some necessary things such as rail.

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to world government. Populations will more readily abandon their national loyalty to a vague regional loyalty than they will for a world authority. Later the regions can be brought together all the way into a single world dictatorship.

No serious analyst believes that the ruling clerics [in Iran] are eager to see their country and possessions vaporized, the immediate consequence of their coming even close to initiating a nuclear war.

Ex-Presidents of the United States get state subsidies. Not so in Russia. You get no government support.

Lebanon was under Israeli occupation, up to its capital, but we did not consider that a disaster. Why? Because it was very clear that there are ways to resist.

Unfortunately, you can’t vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place

Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.

Nuclear weapons are not a defence.

We are a nation of communities… a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.

You don’t get to be a respected intellectual by uttering truisms in monosyllables.

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.

It would be naive to think that the problems plaguing mankind today can be solved with means and methods which were applied or seemed to work in the past.

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.