Roman Abramovich

But charity is a very complicated thing. It’s important to find an area where you can really help and you can feel the results. Charity is not like feeding pigeons in the square. It is a process that requires professional management.

To tell the truth I cannot call my childhood bad. In your childhood you can’t compare things: one eats carrots, one eats candy, both taste good. As a child you cannot tell the difference.

Everyone’s got their own reason. Some believe it’s because I spent some of my childhood in the far north that I helped Chukotka, some believe it’s because I had a difficult childhood that I helped Chukotka, some believe it’s because I stole money that I helped Chukotka. None of these is real. When you come out and you see a situation and there are 50,000 people, you want to do something. I haven’t seen anything worse than what I saw there in my life.

I live on a plane. I like to visit London. If I had to think where I could live if not Moscow, London would be my first choice, and second would be New York. In Moscow I feel most comfortable. I’m used to four different seasons; it’s difficult for people in London to understand. People brought up in Russia like my kids want to play in the snow.

I decided to sit quietly and do business and don’t stick your neck out and tell everybody everything belongs to me. That would only cause problems for myself. Therefore I never told these stories or declared all these things to anyone.

In my personal opinion, Russia is no less democratic than it used to be. It is a democratic country. It is democratic enough.

History teaches us that unity is strength, and cautions us to submerge and overcome our differences in the quest for common goals, to strive, with all our combined strength, for the path to true African brotherhood and unity.

The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces – in nature, in society, in man himself.

England is nothing but the last ward of the European madhouse, and quite possibly it will prove to be the ward for particularly violent cases.

Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.

How incredible our ancestors were. The first astrophysicists, scientists, physicians, mathematicians, architects, creators of so much of the world as we know it. It’s a blessing to know what cloth you’re cut from!

History has shown there are no invincible armies.

He who does not understand history is doomed to repeat it.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

Americans Never Quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We Make History.

Against my protests a mausoleum was built on the Red Square, a monument unbecoming and offensive to the revolutionary consciousness.

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

To persons uninstructed in natural history, their country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.