Boris Yeltsin

I understand that it’s hard for everyone, but one cannot give in to emotions… we’ll have to draw lessons from the current crisis and now we’ll have to work on overcoming it.

A total of 1,580 people, the civilian population, suffered as a result of the bloody wave of terrorist acts that swept over Moscow and other towns and villages of our country.

Let’s not talk about Communism. Communism was just an idea, just pie in the sky.

You can build a throne of bayonets, but you can’t sit on it for long.

While maintaining our nuclear potential at the proper level, we need to devote more attention to developing the entire range of means of information warfare.

Europe has found itself confronted with fresh challenges – challenges of a global character, the nature of which is directly connected with changes in the international climate and the difficulties of seeking new models for co-operation.

I hope my own children never have to fight a war.

…the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon.

You know, they are fooling us, there is no God.

It is my view that we cannot conduct foreign policy at the extremes.

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.

Enjoy your time in public service. It may well be one of the most interesting and challenging times of your life.

Labour has the responsibility to give a lead where the government will not. We need to bring people together, hold the government to account, oppose austerity and set out a path to exit that will protect jobs and incomes.

While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.

George Orwell wrote that nationalists, who are practically the whole intellectual class of a country, not only do not disapprove of the crimes of their own state, but have the remarkable capacity not even to see them.

Terrorism has once again shown it is prepared deliberately to stop at nothing in creating human victims. An end must be put to this. As never before, it is vital to unite forces of the entire world community against terror.

I have always loved and avidly read the novels of Jack London, Jules Verne and Ernest Hemingway. The characters depicted in their books, who are brave and resourceful people embarking on exciting adventures, definitely shaped my inner self and nourished my love for the outdoors.

In prison, I fell in love with my country. I had loved her before then, but like most young people, my affection was little more than a simple appreciation for the comforts and privileges most Americans enjoyed and took for granted. It wasn’t until I had lost America for a time that I realized how much I loved her.

We can win an awful lot of people into the political spectrum, by offering something that is … radical.

The Revolution… was the result of a mature and reflecting preference for freedom, and not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence.

I’m just thinking to myself right now, we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump, right?