Vladimir Putin

Politics should not interfere with sports. And sports should impact politics.

I think our Russian Football Union must play an active part in this… and develop a new generation of sportsmen and soccer players.

Iraq is a small but very proud nation.

Thieves must sit in prison.

There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy.

In line with international law, only the U.N. Security Council could sanction the use of force against a sovereign state. Any other pretext or method which might be used to justify the use of force against an independent sovereign state are inadmissible and can only be interpreted as an aggression.

I’ll be glad to reply to or dodge your questions, depending on what I think will help our election most.

It is only when all black groups, join hands and speak with one voice that we shall be a bargaining force which will decide its own destiny.

In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Descriptive grammar is an attempt to give an account of what the current system is for either a society or an individual, whatever you happen to be studying.

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.

I cannot forgive him [Nelson Mandela] for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with his jailer De Klerk. Hand in hand they went. Do you think De Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart? He had to. The times dictated it, the world had changed.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

If you do politics the right way, I believe, you can actually make people’s lives better. And integrity is the minimum ante to get into the game.

The Pope! How many divisions has he got?

I seemed to be in a minority on every subject. Every argument that came up, every debate that came up, I was in a minority of one usually, sometimes two. That was quite character forming.

In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions.

We’re rounding ’em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And they’re going to be happy because they want to be legalized. And, by the way, I know it doesn’t sound nice. But not everything is nice.

Banning guns is an idea whose time has come.

Scholars per se do not have deeper political insights than other persons and are not morally superior to others. But they are obligated to help politicians seek and find the truth.

In many countries today, moral and ethical norms are being reconsidered; national traditions, differences in nation and culture are being erased.