Vladimir Putin

One has to be insincere and promise something which you cannot fulfill. So you either have to be a fool who does not understand what you are promising, or deliberately be lying.

KGB, collapsed. Of course it was incredibly difficult to go through this. After all, most of my life had been devoted to work in the agencies. But I had made my choice.

Our military might is the guarantor of Russia’s security and independence.

The Comrade Wolf knows whom to eat, as the saying goes. It knows whom to eat and is not about to listen to anyone, it seems.

The philosophy of FIFA is to expand world soccer space, to spread out the world football space.

At least in Russia, you cannot just go and tap into someone’s phone conversation without a warrant issued by court. That’s more or less the way a civilized society should go about fighting terrorism.

The kind of work that should be the main part of life is the kind of work you would want to do if you weren’t being paid for it. It’s work that comes out of your own internal needs, interests and concerns.

I think the American people should express their preferences, and we’ll accept their choice.

Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan, ‘You’re either with us or against us.’

I would like right now to address my colleagues in the regions, to ask them to not allow, under any circumstances, for flea markets and the like to appear at these stadiums, as appeared in other sport-related buildings in Moscow during the middle of the 1990s.

…when you look at a television ad, it is not trying to create an informed consumer who’s going to make a rational choice. The purpose is to delude and deceive by imagery — it’s transparent — meaning to ensure that uninformed consumers will make irrational choices.

The media system protects itself with indignation against a challenge to the right of deceit in the service of power, and the very idea of subjecting the ideological system to rational inquiry elicits incomprehension or outrage, though it is often masked in other terms.

Everything will probably never be OK. But we have to try for it.

Our great African-American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore.

We live in a democracy and the Government has to be responsive to Parliament.

I don’t mind a good fight. For reasons known only to God, I’ve had quite a few tough ones in my life. But I learned an important lesson along the way: In the end, it matters less that you can fight. What you fight for is the real test.

We’re going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay. And the reason they’re going to pay and the way they’re going to pay, Bob, is this. We have a trade deficit now with Mexico of $58 billion a year. The wall is going to cost $10 billion a year. That’s what it’s going to cost. It’s going to be a powerful wall. It’s going to cost $10 billion.

A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production and the wage slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.

The despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism of an individual.

With regard to freedom of speech there are basically two positions: you defend it vigorously for views you hate, or you reject it and prefer Stalinist/fascist standards. It is unfortunate that it remains necessary to stress these simple truths.

I love the Russian classics very much, the Russian classical literature. But I also read modern literature. As far as Russian literature is concerned, I am very fond of Tolstoy and Chekhov, and I also enjoy reading Gogol very much.