Joseph Stalin

The only way a kid is going to practise is if it’s total fun for him… and it was for me.

If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.

The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks…. And therefore I raise my glass to you, writers, the engineers of the human soul.

We don’t let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?

The only real power comes out of a long rifle.

Words are one thing – deeds something entirely different. Fine words are a mask to cover shady deeds. A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.

When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: Why do I care if my high school’s team wins the football game? I don’t know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me… why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense. But the point is, it does make sense: It’s a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it’s training in irrational jingoism. That’s also a feature of competitive sports.

I feel a lot of people listen to what I have to say.

Well, the Washington consensus – which is basically designed for the Third World to make it that way, and keep it that way – it’s now being applied not just to the Third World countries, but to the rich industrial societies, with the United States and Britain in the lead.

Throughout the two leadership campaigns I read quite a lot of Oscar Wilde.

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.

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

When in 2007 I spoke in Munich…I spoke about the fact that the United States is widening the jurisdiction of its laws beyond its national borders, and that this is unacceptable. And that’s exactly what’s happening now, also to our European and other partners. Why is this happening? No one wanted to listen and no one did anything to stop this from developing.

One day we took each other by the hand and went for a walk in the evening. And we walked like that for our whole life.

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

Organization and education, when they interact with each other, they strengthen each other, they are mutually supportive.

Israel does not care about the international public opinion.

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

International terrorism is throwing down a challenge, and not just to Russia.

Russia does not and cannot have any political choice but democracy. I want to say, and even stress, that we share those universal democratic principles taken around the whole world.

Our task, your task… is to try to connect the dots before something happens. People say, ‘Well, where’s the smoking gun?’ Well, we don’t want to see a smoking gun from a weapon of mass destruction.