Vladimir Putin

From the beginning, we failed to overcome Europe’s division. The Berlin Wall fell, but invisible walls were moved to the East of Europe. This has led to mutual misunderstandings and assignments of guilt. They are the cause of all crises ever since.

We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.

A happy love needs to be reciprocated.

If he gave an assignment, he didn’t really care how it was done or who did it or what problems they had. It just had to get done, and that was that.

There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy.

I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days.

My personal position is that society must keep children safe.

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

KGB, collapsed. Of course it was incredibly difficult to go through this. After all, most of my life had been devoted to work in the agencies. But I had made my choice.

The day I made that statement, about the inventing the internet, I was tired because I’d been up all night inventing the Camcorder.

It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.

The ability to compromise is not a diplomatic politeness toward a partner but rather taking into account and respecting your partner’s legitimate interests.

It doesn’t matter who they vote for, they always vote for us…

Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, with the ending of the Warsaw Pact mutual defence strategy, was the obvious time for Nato to have been disbanded.

Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level – there’s a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I’m opposed to political fascism, I’m opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it’s pointless to talk about democracy.

Preserve the President’s options. He may need them.

How can a bureaucrat or a politician be trusted if he says loud words for the sake of Russia’s good while trying to take his funds, his money abroad?

Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, ‘What kind of peace?’

The Federal Government should be the last resort, not the first. Ask if a potential program is truly a federal responsibility or whether it can better be handled privately, by voluntary organizations, or by local or state governments.

Without Revolutionary theory, there can be no Revolutionary Movement.