Vladimir Putin

The Russian people have their own cultural code, their own tradition.

The Russian people and Russian culture are the linchpin, the glue that binds together this unique civilization.

The Russian people have unilaterally made their choice in direction of democracy in the early ’90s. They will not be led astray. Nobody should be having any doubts.

Overall, we are moving in the right direction. We have started on the trajectory toward robust economic growth in Russia. Yes, this growth is humble, small, but it is also not a fall. Growth was at 1.5 percent last year.

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?

Who is going to help them abroad? They are just persecuted there. Conditions are created making their work impossible. This is a big mistake by those who are doing this in the West.

It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody’s permission or to obey anybody’s orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today.

We’re numb. We’re numb to 500 kids getting killed in Chicago last year. We’re numb that there were dozens of police shootings in the beginning of July. We’re numb to places on the earth where we don’t live. Our life is OK, but it’s OK for other people’s lives to not be OK.

If every human rights atrocity is described as a Holocaust,[Adolf] Hitler’s attempted obliteration of the Jewish people is diminished or de-recognised in our history.

Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive tools of production. That was its primary purpose. And don’t think people didn’t know it. They knew it and they fought against it. There was a lot of resistance to mass education for exactly that reason.

Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.

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 am most anxious that in dealing with matters which every Member knows are extremely delicate matters, I should not use any phrase or expression which would cause offence to our friends and Allies on the Continent or across the Atlantic Ocean.

I understand that it’s hard for everyone, but one cannot give in to emotions… we’ll have to draw lessons from the current crisis and now we’ll have to work on overcoming it.

I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth, environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

Large corporate advertisers on TV will rarely sponsor programs that engage in serious criticisms of corporate activities, such as the problem of environmental degradation, the workings of the military-industrial complex, or corporate support of and benefits from 3rd World tyrannies.

I don’t respond in any way to personal abuse that is thrown at me.

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

You need to put drones under control; you need to lay out certain rules of engagement in order to prevent or minimize collateral casualties. It is extremely important.

[on Trump] It is not our business to asses his worthiness, but he is the absolute leader of the presidential race.