Mikhail Gorbachev

More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life.

We had 10 years after the Cold War to build a new world order and yet we squandered them. The United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently. Every US president has to have a war.

A society should never become like a pond with stagnant water, without movement. That’s the most important thing.

I think God has some mechanism that he uses to punish those that make mistakes.

The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.

I believe, as Lenin said, that this revolutionary chaos may yet crystallize into new forms of life.

Our soldiers are there (in Syria) in order to secure Russia’s interests in this critically important part of the world, which is so near to us. And they will stay there, for as long as it is in Russia’s interest for them to do so.

Our society, including the liberals, must understand that there must be order.

Labour Party members must all be free to criticise and oppose injustice and abuse wherever we find it.

I think in defeat you grope for things that are happy, and it’s hard.

Europe has found itself confronted with fresh challenges – challenges of a global character, the nature of which is directly connected with changes in the international climate and the difficulties of seeking new models for co-operation.

The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated, but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity.

If you claim to have a theory that deduces unexpected consequences from nontrivial principles, let’s see it.

How it is we have so much information, but know so little?

A business or a big corporation is a fascist structure internally. Power is at the top. Orders go from top to bottom. You either follow the orders or get out.

Hitlers come and go, but Germany and the German people remain.

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

No one should be allowed to violently trample on the law.

The Obama policies [2016] are to try to pressure Mexico to keep Central American immigrants from coming anywhere near us. Who are the Central American immigrants? These are people fleeing from the wreckage left by US government policies.

Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by ‘sophisticated’ methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.

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.