Mikhail Gorbachev

Sometimes when you stand face to face with someone, you cannot see his face.

What we need is Star Peace and not Star Wars.

If not me, who? And if not now, when?

Sometimes it’s difficult to accept, to recognise one’s own mistakes, but one must do it. I was guilty of overconfidence and arrogance, and I was punished for that.

If current technological processes continue without change, the environment will change, and we, the human species, will either have to mutate or even die, to disappear, as many species have disappeared.

I paid too heavy a price for perestroika.

I feel like everyone else in this country today. I am utterly devastated.

My wife is Mexican and my constituency is very, very multicultural.

Despite all the achievements of civilisation, the human being is still one of the most vulnerable creatures on earth.

This American government – what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.

So the indigenous population of what’s now the United States was ‘exterminated’, to use the word that the founding fathers used. Not totally, but that was what was considered the right thing to do. They replaced them and it became a kind of settler state, not an imperial state.

Advertisers will want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the “buying mood”…and thus fit in with the spirit of the primary purpose of program purchases-the dissemination of a selling message.

Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.

There can be no bosses in our country except the people. The job of the government is to serve, not to dominate.

I think we should talk about what the objectives of the party are, whether that’s restoring the Clause Four as it was originally written or it’s a different one, but I think we shouldn’t shy away from public participation, public investment in industry, i would want us to have a set of objectives which does include public ownership of some necessary things such as rail.

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

The realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know.

We can make a rough distinction between the managerial class and the rest. The managers take part in decision-making in the state, the private economy, and the doctrinal institutions. The rest are to cede authority to state and private elites, to accept what they are told…

[on Trump] The winning candidate, now the president-elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans now believe that human activity is responsible for global warming. Sixty-nine percent believe that the Earth is heating up in a significant way. There has been progress, but here is the key: when given a list of challenges to confront, global warming is still listed at near the bottom. What is missing is a sense of urgency.