There should be competition and exchanges between different countries, but there are certainly certain universal values, and that is freedom and democracy.
I couldn’t wait to get to the most powerful position, because I thought then I would be able to fix problems that only the leader can fix. But when I got there, I realized we needed revolutionary change.
The world is changed by idealists.
Every country should conduct its own reforms, should develop its own model, taking into account the experience of other countries, whether close neighbours or far away countries.
The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.
I grew up in a family of peasants, and it was there that I saw the way that, for example, our wheat fields suffered as a result of dust storms, water erosion and wind erosion; I saw the effect of that on life – on human life.
What about Jesus Christ? I say that he was a precursor of idealists; a precursor of socialists.
Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can’t resolve the problem of women’s pantyhose. There’s no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government.
The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.
We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.
Surely, God on high has not refused to give us enough wisdom to find ways to bring us an improvement in relations between the two great nations on earth.
Americans have a severe disease – worse than AIDS. It’s called the winner’s complex.
Sometimes it’s difficult to accept, to recognise one’s own mistakes, but one must do it. I was guilty of overconfidence and arrogance, and I was punished for that.
If current technological processes continue without change, the environment will change, and we, the human species, will either have to mutate or even die, to disappear, as many species have disappeared.
Sometimes when you stand face to face with someone, you cannot see his face.
Democracy must learn to defend itself.
I think God has some mechanism that he uses to punish those that make mistakes.
Without perestroika, the cold war simply would not have ended. But the world could not continue developing as it had, with the stark menace of nuclear war ever present.
I think the environmental problem will be the number one item on the agenda of the 21st century… This is a problem that cannot be postponed.
I paid too heavy a price for perestroika.
I am a Communist, a convinced Communist! For some that may be a fantasy. But to me it is my main goal.
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