Vladimir Putin

Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data that supports the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we have not received any such information from our partners as yet.

The whole world recognizes Russia’s cultural achievements. It is impossible to imagine the world culture without Russian culture, without our music and literature.

Iraq is a small but very proud nation.

I have a private life in which I do not permit interference. It must be respected.

If you aspire to be a leader of your own country, you must speak your own language, for God’s sake.

Thieves must sit in prison.

If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a ‘peace conference’, you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.

It was sort of important for us not to deal with a specific policy change, or a specific sort of approach, but to deal with cultural change.

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‘Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?

Going to war creates a legacy of bitterness and problems, let us be a force for change in the world, a force for humanity in the world, a force for peace in the world, and a force that recognizes we can not go on like this, with grotesque levels of global inequality, grotesque threats to our environment all around the world, without the rich and powerful governments stepping up to the plate to make sure our world becomes safer and better — and those people don’t end up in poverty, in refugee camps, wasting their lives away.

If you look at the American army’s counterinsurgency literature…it begins with an analysis of the German experience in Europe, written with the cooperation of Nazi officers…which techniques for controlling resistance worked, which ones didn’t.

One of the reasons the US wants to control the oil is because profits flow back and they flow in a lot of ways. Its not just oil profits, it’s also military sales. The biggest purchaser of US arms and probably British arms is either Saudi Arabia or UAE, one of the rich oil producers.

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

No matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shape the soul and let the glory out.

I like the cold weather. It means you get work done.

We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.

The U.S. and Britain are incapable of controlling all of Iraq.

Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy.

We can realise a lasting peace and transform the East-West relationship to one of enduring co-operation.

America didn’t invent human rights. Those rights are common to all people: nations, cultures, and religions cannot choose to simply opt out of them.