Mikhail Gorbachev

There are still independent newspapers and magazines, they do exist. But as for television, the situation is not as good. It’s one of the main problems. I would say, as regards the development of democracy, of democracy laying down roots – that is something that Russia still needs to address.

I don’t think Russia is setting this as a goal; I don’t think this should be Russia’s goal. I think even the United States doesn’t need to be a superpower. China doesn’t need to be a superpower. It’s a different world.

We could only solve our problems by cooperating with other countries. It would have been paradoxical not to cooperate. And therefore we needed to put an end to the Iron Curtain, to change the nature of international relations, to rid them of ideological confrontation, and particularly to end the arms race.

One day we took each other by the hand and went for a walk in the evening. And we walked like that for our whole life.

The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.

If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven’t done much today.

The other candidates – they went in, they didn’t know the air conditioning didn’t work. They sweated like dogs…How are they gonna beat ISIS? I don’t think it’s gonna happen.

Power that isn’t really justified by the will of the governed should be dismantled.

We could only solve our problems by cooperating with other countries. It would have been paradoxical not to cooperate. And therefore we needed to put an end to the Iron Curtain, to change the nature of international relations, to rid them of ideological confrontation, and particularly to end the arms race.

You can’t be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who’s for you and who’s against you.

But do the governors themselves need that? Are they ready to line up under the vertikal? They are. After all, the governors are part of the country, and they also suffer from management weaknesses. Not everyone is going to like everything. You can’t please everybody, but you can find some common approaches. I was also interested in learning more about the country. I had only ever worked in St. Petersburg, apart from the time I spent abroad. . . . Of course, my seven years of experience in Peter was good experience, both administrative and managerial. But Peter isn’t the whole country. I wanted to travel and see things. So, why did you drop that interesting job and go to work as director of the FSB? Do you have some affinity for the agencies? No. I wasn’t asked whether or not I wanted to go, and they had given me no inkling that I was even being considered for such an appointment. The president simply signed a decree. . . .

On the day I became Soviet leader, in March 1985, I had a special meeting with the leaders of the Warsaw Pact countries and told them: ‘You are independent, and we are independent. You are responsible for your policies, we are responsible for ours. We will not intervene in your affairs, I promise you.’

One of the good things about the way the Gulf War ended in 1991 is, you’d see the Vietnam veterans marching with the Gulf War veterans.

Poland should be strong and prosperous and independent and play its proper role as a great nation in the heart of Europe.

I am Syrian, I was made in Syria, I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.

I would prefer to think of anarchism as the libertarian left, and from that point of view anarchism can be conceived as a kind of voluntary socialism, that is, as libertarian socialist or anarcho-syndicalist or communist anarchist [Bakunin, Kropotkin and others.]

Ultimately it’s a question of whether democracy is going to be allowed to exist, and to what extent. And it’s entirely natural that the business world, along with the state, which they largely dominate, would want to limit democracy. It threatens them.

The business classes are very class-conscious-they’re constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition. Occasionally this is recognized.

I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me.

A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.

Naturally, any conqueror is going to play one group against another. For example, I think about 90% of the forces that the British used to control India were Indians.