Mikhail Gorbachev

Americans have a severe disease – worse than AIDS. It’s called the winner’s complex.

You cannot put Russia down on its knees and hold it there because Russia will ultimately pull out.

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.

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.

We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.

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.

One should seek out an audience that matters — and furthermore (another important qualification), it should not be seen as an audience, but as a community of common concern in which one hopes to participate constructively. We should not be speaking to, but with.

The blacks want always Democrats … You know it’s like the plan they did, to take the fathers out the home and put them on welfare … Does anybody know about that? That’s a Democratic plan.

In fact, in my view, if the managers of the propaganda system were more intelligent, they would allow more leeway to real dissidents and critics. Because it still wouldn’t make much of a difference, given the overwhelming weight of propaganda on the other side…

Anyone who doesn’t regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.

Public officials are all right if they stay in their proper sphere and perform their proper functions but when they get greedy for wider scope and more power and money they lose their value and become parasites.

I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.

This American government – what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.

It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.

About 70% of the public, the lowest 70% on the income scale, are pretty much disenfranchised. Their attitudes have no detectable influence on the policies of their own representatives. As you move up the scale you get a bit more influence. When you get to the top, policy is made.

However much I dislike the idea of abortion, you should not criminalize a woman who, in very difficult circumstances, makes that choice.

An animating vision must rest on some conception of human nature, of what’s good for people, of their needs and rights, of the aspects of their nature that should be nurtured, encouraged and permitted to flourish for their benefit and that of others.

The most repressive countries in the Middle East are the ones we support. By comparison to Saudi Arabia, Iran looks like Norway…As far as violence in the Middle East is concerned, the Saudi Arabian [and] UAE actions in Yemen, which we’re supporting, are much worse than anything.

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.

Everywhere the Europeans went, whether it was the Portuguese or the Spanish or the English or the Dutch, they fought with a level of violence which appalled the natives. They had never seen anything like it. That was true virtually over the entire world, with very few exceptions.

Well take, say a corporate executive By law, a corporate executive must work to increase the profitability of the corporation. Disregarding the effects that it has on others. That’s actually a legal principle and that’s psychopathic.