Mikhail Gorbachev

Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.

The world is changed by idealists.

Political leaders still think things can be done through force, but that cannot solve terrorism. Backwardness is the breeding ground of terror, and that is what we have to fight.

Ex-Presidents of the United States get state subsidies. Not so in Russia. You get no government support.

I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Being at one with nature.

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

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.

Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be ever so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.

The drug war not only gets rid of the superfluous population, it frightens everybody else. Drugs play a role similar to communism or terrorism, people huddle beneath the umbrella of authority for protection from the menace.

I think I’d be a better president because I was in combat.

I think one can give a good argument that looting isn’t violence at all. In a sense, most of us are looters, or at any rate we are benefiting from others’ looting.

However much I dislike the idea of abortion, you should not criminalize a woman who, in very difficult circumstances, makes that choice.

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

To cite the facts of history is to fall prey to ‘moral equivalence,’ or ‘political correctness,’ or ‘the error of of atheism,’ or one of the other misdeeds concocted to guard against the sins of understanding and insight into the real world.

Some experts believe that somebody is deceiving WikiLeaks, that its reputation is being undermined in order for it to be used for political purposes.

I have a great relationship with the Mexican people.

I would not take a decision that kills millions of people, I do not believe the threat of mass murder is a legitimate way to go about dealing with international relations.

At last, Russia has returned to the world arena as a strong state – a country that others heed and that can stand up for itself.

NATO was built to counteract the Soviet Union in its day and time. At this point there is no threat coming from the Soviet Union, because there is no Soviet Union anymore. And where there was the Soviet Union once, there is now a number of countries, among them the new and democratic Russia.

My response to the end of Soviet tyranny was similar to my reaction to the defeat of Hitler and Mussolini. In all cases, it is a victory for the human spirit. It should have been particularly welcome to socialists, since a great enemy of socialism had at last collapsed.

I decided to invite Donald Trump on his visit to Britain to come with me to my constituency because he has problems with Mexicans and he has problems with Muslims.