Vladimir Putin

You must obey the law, always, not only when they grab you by your special place.

As yet we do not plan to withdraw these forces. But I direct your attention to the fact that I did not call these bases by any other name – I called them bases. We are not building long-term military structures there and if we need to, we could withdraw our military personnel very quickly, without incurring any financial losses.

A considerable share of the world’s population still cannot afford comfortable housing, education and quality health care.

John McCain fought in Vietnam – I think that he has enough civilian blood on his hands.

Iraq is a small but very proud nation.

One has to be insincere and promise something which you cannot fulfill. So you either have to be a fool who does not understand what you are promising, or deliberately be lying.

If you want to preserve – I’m very serious now – if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.

A total of 1,580 people, the civilian population, suffered as a result of the bloody wave of terrorist acts that swept over Moscow and other towns and villages of our country.

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important.

Edward Bernays’ first great achievement, that sort of made a star out of him, was a public relations campaign trying to get women to smoke. So he had models walking down Fifth Avenue smoking cigarettes and showing how it makes you beautiful and slim.

Presidential leadership needn’t always cost money. Look for low- and no-cost options. They can be surprisingly effective.

I believe that the presidential term should be limited.

Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, ‘What kind of peace?’

I’ve made it clear my views on austerity and I’ve made it very clear my views on the Iraq War. And I promised that I would, and I did, give the apology on the anniversary of Iraq, and I stand by that, because I think it was a catastrophic mistake.

There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

I’m a history buff, and I know that big changes take time. But I also know that, setting politics aside, usually things are never as good as you think they are or as bad as you think they are. And that has served me well temperamentally.

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.

I think the international community should unite to fight such inhuman phenomena as terror attacks and the murder of totally innocent people.

There was a recent study by the IMF which tried to estimate the subsidy that energy corporations get from governments. The total was colossal. I think it was around $5 trillion annually. That’s got nothing to do with markets and capitalism.

We shouldn’t be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.