Vladimir Putin

The task of the government is not only to pour honey into a cup, but sometimes to give bitter medicine.

Nationalizing the whole oil sector would be a difficult and highly dangerous process, which could have negative consequences not only for the sector but for the whole economy.

Recently one of Germany’s famous and popular publications wrote that President Trump is pushing Europe toward Putin. If we take this together with an earlier joke, that Russia influenced elections in the United States, then this all taken together starts sounding pretty funny. We apparently influenced the election of the U.S. President, and then he gifted us Europe. Total nonsense. There’s no way to describe this other than as a joke.

I believe I have mentioned that President Trump – well it’s his first presidential term and he’s gaining momentum, he’s building up his experience in this field and we’ve had a dialogue on this issue [North Korea]. He listens to what I’m saying, he listens to my arguments.

We need business to understand its social responsibility, that the main task and objective for a business is not to generate extra income and to become rich and transfer the money abroad, but to look and evaluate what a businessman has done for the country, for the people, on whose account he or she has become so rich.

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 reason why there is now no communist government in Paris is because in the circumstances of 1945 the Soviet army was not able to reach French soil.

I’m not a massive novel reader. But I do… I like some of the classics. Graham Greene. I’ve always enjoyed Madame Bovary… And I like a lot of American and Russian novels.

If the staff lacks policy guidance against which to test decisions, their decisions will be random.

Let’s defend the principle of a society that cares for everyone and everyone cares for everyone else.

This is not a battle between the United States of America and terrorism, but between the free and democratic world and terrorism.

In France, to break the powerful labor movement, the US occupying forces needed strikebreakers and, more generally, goons. They reconstituted the Corsican Mafia for that purpose and, in payment, allowed them to restore the old heroin connection based in Marseilles…

…the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon.

It is beyond imagining in responsible circles that we might have some culpability for mass slaughter and destruction, or owe some debt to the millions of maimed and orphaned, or to the peasants who still die from exploding ordnance left from the U.S. assault…

[The Americans] should accept their part of the blame. Let them say so. We talked to them all the time, we were telling them that we want Afghanistan to be an independent country, that we are leaving, we are withdrawing from that country. But at that same time, our partners were working in secret with those forces with whom they are now fighting. It’s called the historical and political boomerang. I think God has some mechanism that he uses to punish those that make mistakes.

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man’s moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

We have more people than ever using foodbanks, we have a greater number of people being homeless and many people in housing stress.

Our military might is the guarantor of Russia’s security and independence.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

In accordance with the prevailing conceptions in the U.S., there is no infringement on democracy if a few corporations control the information system: in fact, that is the essence of democracy.

U.S. society doesn’t want to play the role of international policeman.