Mikhail Gorbachev

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

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

America must be the teacher of democracy, not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard.

I am a Communist, a convinced Communist! For some that may be a fantasy. But to me it is my main goal.

It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.

Americans have a severe disease – worse than AIDS. It’s called the winner’s complex.

Much of the world must be astonished-if they are not collapsing in laughter-while watching the performances in high places and in media concerning Russian efforts to influence an American election, a familiar US government specialty as far back as we choose to trace the practice.

Black lives must not matter until black people start respecting black lives and stop killing ourselves.

Power without a nation’s confidence is nothing.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

The other candidates – they went in, they didn’t know the air conditioning didn’t work. They sweated like dogs…How are they gonna beat ISIS? I don’t think it’s gonna happen.

The most significant indicator that there is no disaster in Iraq is the fact that there is no exodus.

Our party has been accused of fooling the public by calling tax increases ‘revenue enhancement’. Not so. No one was fooled.

So the growth of corporate propaganda in the United States more or less parallels the growth of democracy, for quite straightforward reasons. It’s not any kind of secret. It is discussed very frankly and openly in business literature and academic social-science journals.

I have a very positive attitude to anyone who is protecting the environment, but it’s inadmissible when people are using it as a means of promoting themselves, using it as a source of self-enrichment. I don’t want to name any specific examples… but often, environmentalism is used to blackmail companies.

We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.

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

[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.

When you’re not engaged in the day-to-day struggles that everybody feels, you slowly start losing touch. And I think it’s important for the people in the White House to have a finger on the pulse.

One can truly enjoy his or her life only while experiencing it, and it is inevitably related to a certain level of risk.

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