Vladimir Putin

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent, the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

The understanding that a third world war could be the end of civilization should restrain us from taking extreme steps on the international arena that are highly dangerous for modern civilization.

The more intermediaries there are, the more problems there are.

We are not going to close anything… I also worked in the security services and know it is easiest to ban, and harder to find civilized solutions. Therefore, I’m going to urge all my colleagues to take this route, the route of security and law enforcement agencies using modern methods to combat offences, including terrorism, without restricting freedoms including on the Internet.

Cromwell is just as much of a bloody dictator as was Stalin.

In accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the issues of foreign policy and defense are fully in the hands of the president.

I think we should talk about what the objectives of the party are, whether that’s restoring the Clause Four as it was originally written or it’s a different one, but I think we shouldn’t shy away from public participation, public investment in industry, i would want us to have a set of objectives which does include public ownership of some necessary things such as rail.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda.

Americans believe their freedom to be the best instrument and surest safeguard… to secure for themselves a government which will allow them to acquire the things they covet and which will not debar them from the peaceful enjoyment of those possessions.

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.

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’

You can do a lot more with weapons and politeness than just politeness.

Undoubtedly, our path is not of the easiest; but, just as undoubtedly, we are not to be frightened by difficulties. Paraphrasing from the well-known words of Luther, Russia might say: ‘Here I stand on the frontier between the old, capitalist world and the new, socialist world. Here on this frontier I unite the efforts of the proletarians of the West and of the peasantry of the East in order to shatter the old world. May the god of history be my aid!

If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.

We, in Syria, our point of view stems from our experience.

We don’t pass by on the other side.

Israel does not care about the international public opinion.

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.

Liberty is not merely one particular value…it is the source and condition of most moral values. What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

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