Boris Yeltsin

I would like to stress here that a lasting peace in the Chechen republic and so-called peace talks with the bandits are not the same thing, and I would ask everyone to make no mistake about that.

Russia also declared its independence. This was approved by the Supreme Soviet, and you know and remember that there was the Declaration on the Independence of Russia.

We don’t appreciate what we have until it’s gone. Freedom is like that. It’s like air. When you have it, you don’t notice it.

We all have an equal interest in stability and security throughout Europe. The years the OSCE has existed, and particularly this year, have given rise to great expectations and at the same time to powerful disappointments.

There are numerous bugbears in the profession of a politician. First, ordinary life suffers. Second, there are many temptations to ruin you and those around you. And I suppose third, and this is rarely discussed, people at the top generally have no friends.

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

That just fires up his worshipful base, providing more evidence that the hated liberal elites are trying to destroy the one guy in the political arena who is dedicated to defending the common folk – who he is shafting, with delight, at every opportunity.

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

If you don’t like what someone has to say, argue with them.

Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.

In the history of modern socialism this is a phenomenon, that the strife of the various trends within the socialist movement has from national become international.

From the point of view of the policy makers, the long-term future of the country doesn’t matter so much. What matters is just those sectors of society that sustain concentrated privilege.

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

The society to which we should aspire, I think, would respect the concept “jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen”: to each according to their needs. Among the primary needs for most people is a life of dignity and fulfillment.

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

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.

There was also an operation involving the Vatican, the US State Department and British intelligence, which took some of the worst Nazi criminals and used them, at first in Europe. For example, Klaus Barbie, the butcher of Lyon, was taken over by US intelligence and put back to work.

How dare these people talk about security for families and people in Britain? There’s no security for the 2.8 million households in Britain forced into problem debt by stagnating wages and the Tory record of the longest fall in living standards since records began.

I’m not a politician.

I didn’t come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country.

From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.