Vladimir Putin

Why does the world dislike Russia? I do not think that we are unloved or considered to be ignorant.

Everything will probably never be OK. But we have to try for it.

My personal position is that society must keep children safe.

I don’t regret anything. I did everything absolutely correctly.

KGB, collapsed. Of course it was incredibly difficult to go through this. After all, most of my life had been devoted to work in the agencies. But I had made my choice.

As far as oligarchs who acquire sports team abroad, and invest money abroad, I wouldn’t treat this phenomenon as something bad.

If current technological processes continue without change, the environment will change, and we, the human species, will either have to mutate or even die, to disappear, as many species have disappeared.

There are growing domestic social and economic problems, in fact, maybe catastrophes. Nobody in power has any intention of doing anything about them. If you look at the domestic programs of the administrations of the past ten years-I include here the Democratic opposition-there’s really no serious proposal about what to do about the severe problems of health, education, homelessness, joblessness, crime, soaring criminal populations, jails, deterioration in the inner cities – the whole raft of problems… In such circumstances you’ve got to divert the bewildered herd, because if they start noticing this they may not like it, since they’re the ones suffering from it. Just having them watch the Superbowl and the sitcoms may not be enough. You have to whip them up into fear of enemies. In the 1930s Hitler whipped them into fear of the Jews and gypsies. You had to crush them to defend yourselves. We have our ways, too. Over the last ten years, every year ot two, some major monster is constructed that we have to defend ourselves against.,

Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

Nobody has better respect for intelligence than Donald Trump.

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

After all the proper subjects of taxation have been exhausted, if the exigencies of the state still continue to require new taxes, they must be imposed upon improper ones.

Arafat’s departure has created an awesome opportunity.

Naturally, any conqueror is going to play one group against another. For example, I think about 90% of the forces that the British used to control India were Indians.

[Republicans] have turned to mobilizing sectors of the population that have always been there, but not as an organized coalitional political force: evangelicals, nativists, racists and the victims of the forms of globalization…Every candidate that has emerged from the base — such as [Michele] Bachmann, [Herman] Cain or [Rick] Santorum — has been so extreme that the Republican establishment had to use its ample resources to beat them down. The difference in 2016 is that the establishment failed, much to its chagrin, as we have seen..

I am most anxious that in dealing with matters which every Member knows are extremely delicate matters, I should not use any phrase or expression which would cause offence to our friends and Allies on the Continent or across the Atlantic Ocean.

I’ve been in the Labour Party all my life. I am a socialist. I am determined to see a fairer and more equal society.

One fundamental goal of any well-crafted indoctrination program is to direct attention elsewhere, away from effective power, its roots, and the disguises it assumes.

We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and hire American.

The events in Crimea themselves have nothing to do with what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other regions. In my opinion, when the world becomes unipolar, or when someone tries to make it so, then this one pole has the illusion that all issues can be settled through power. And only when there is a balance of power does the desire to negotiate appears.

In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known.