Boris Yeltsin

One could see that what you are writing was that today’s meeting with President Bill Clinton was going to be a disaster. Now, for the first time, I can tell you that you are a disaster.

You have no right to criticise Russia over Chechnya.

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

I refer to calls for humanitarian intervention in the affairs of another state – a new idea, this – even when they are made under the pretext of defending human rights and freedoms.

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.

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.

Our society, including the liberals, must understand that there must be order.

Education is really aimed at helping students get to the point where they can learn on their own because that is what you’re going to do during your life, not just absorb materials given to you by the outside, and repeat it.

The centerpiece of [Trump’s] press conference with Putin, bitterly condemned by elite opinion, was his effort to discredit Mueller. The tactic is succeeding quite well…polls show that Mueller’s public image is at an all-time low.

To cite the facts of history is to fall prey to ‘moral equivalence,’ or ‘political correctness,’ or ‘the error of of atheism,’ or one of the other misdeeds concocted to guard against the sins of understanding and insight into the real world.

Deep Throat’s information, and in my view, courage, allowed the newspaper to use what he knew and suspected.

Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.

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.

Artillery is the god of war.

I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth, environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

You should never be so high and mighty you can’t listen to somebody else and learn something from them. Leadership is as much about using the ear as using the mouth.

Words are one thing – deeds something entirely different. Fine words are a mask to cover shady deeds. A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.

China and North Korea have already proposed that North Korea freeze its nuclear and missile programs. The proposal, though, was rejected at once by Washington…because…[the proposal] calls on the U.S. to halt its threatening military exercises on North Korea’s borders…

We are well aware from which countries and through which countries the terrorists are receiving support. In the immediate future I shall be calling upon the leaders of these states to put a stop to this kind of activity.

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.