Mikhail Gorbachev

Surely, God on high has not refused to give us enough wisdom to find ways to bring us an improvement in relations between the two great nations on earth.

We could only solve our problems by cooperating with other countries. It would have been paradoxical not to cooperate. And therefore we needed to put an end to the Iron Curtain, to change the nature of international relations, to rid them of ideological confrontation, and particularly to end the arms race.

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

The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.

The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.

Sometimes people ask me why I began perestroika. Were the causes basically domestic or foreign? The domestic reasons were undoubtedly the main ones, but the danger of nuclear war was so serious that it was a no less significant factor.

Demographers affirm that choosing to have a second child is already a potential choice in favour of a third.

Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.

I believe the measure of a man isn’t just the road he’s traveled; it’s the choices he’s made along the way.

The understanding that a third world war could be the end of civilization should restrain us from taking extreme steps on the international arena that are highly dangerous for modern civilization.

I think we need more young people; we need to elect young people to government. We need to give them a chance, in the media, in politics, in democracy.

We challenge the narrative that only the individual matters, and the collective is irrelevant, instead we say the common good is the aspiration of all of us.

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

Jefferson, to his credit, at least recognized that the slavery in which he participated was ‘the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.’

Take a look at the British conquest of Ireland, the earliest of the Western colonial conquests. It was described in the same terms as the conquest of Africa. The Irish were a different race. They weren’t human. They weren’t like us. We had to crush and destroy them.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

It’s Russia some people would like to get rid of. They are still afraid of our nuclear deterrent. We have our own foreign policy whether they like it or not.

The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don’t know how to be submissive, and so on – because they’re dysfunctional to the institutions.

We need a great president.

Well, I think everybody is frustrated by the finances of the U.N. and the inability to solve problems of war and peace.

By the autumn of this year, additional measures should be introduced which will stabilize the situation on the market.