Vladimir Putin

Stalin is the most popular figure in all of Russia.

The centuries-old history and culture of India, majestic architectural monuments and museums of Delhi, Agra and Mumbai have a unique attractive force.

A considerable share of the world’s population still cannot afford comfortable housing, education and quality health care.

I have always reacted negatively to those who with their snotty noses and erotic fantasies prowl into others’ lives.

Russia and China are very natural partners. We are neighbors with an immense common border.

The task of the government is not only to pour honey into a cup, but sometimes to give bitter medicine.

Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.

[Republicans] have turned to mobilizing sectors of the population that have always been there, but not as an organized coalitional political force: evangelicals, nativists, racists and the victims of the forms of globalization…Every candidate that has emerged from the base — such as [Michele] Bachmann, [Herman] Cain or [Rick] Santorum — has been so extreme that the Republican establishment had to use its ample resources to beat them down. The difference in 2016 is that the establishment failed, much to its chagrin, as we have seen..

I grew up in a family of peasants, and it was there that I saw the way that, for example, our wheat fields suffered as a result of dust storms, water erosion and wind erosion; I saw the effect of that on life – on human life.

Don’t speak ill of your predecessors or successors. You didn’t walk in their shoes.

At last, Russia has returned to the world arena as a strong state – a country that others heed and that can stand up for itself.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.

In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions.

One of the reasons the US wants to control the oil is because profits flow back and they flow in a lot of ways. Its not just oil profits, it’s also military sales. The biggest purchaser of US arms and probably British arms is either Saudi Arabia or UAE, one of the rich oil producers.

We need not stride resolutely towards catastrophe, merely because those are the marching orders.

Take Spain. It was admitted into the European Community with some conditions, one of which was that it is to be what is pretty openly called a ‘barrier’ to these hordes of North Africans who the Europeans are afraid are going to flock up to Europe. It’s a narrow distance.

I can tell you this: If I’m ever in a position to call the shots, I’m not going to rush to send somebody else’s kids into a war.

The threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability – that threat is real.

I cannot forgive him [Nelson Mandela] for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with his jailer De Klerk. Hand in hand they went. Do you think De Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart? He had to. The times dictated it, the world had changed.

Patrick Cockburn…has correctly pointed out that what he calls the Wahhabisation of Sunni Islam, the spread of Saudi extremist Wahhabi doctrine over Sunni Islam, the Sunni world, is one of the real disasters of modern-of the modern era.