Vladimir Putin

If you want my personal attitude, I would tell you that I don’t care about a person’s sexual orientation.

Stability of tax policy must be absolutely guaranteed for the next six years.

It’s better to be hanged for loyalty than be rewarded for betrayal.

I hope that things will not come to provocations (during the soccer World Cup). If this happens I think it would have very serious consequences for the Ukrainian government in general.

I would prefer to abandon the terminology of the past. ‘Superpower’ is something which we used during the cold war time. Why use it now?

How does one control weight? By not overeating. How does one stay in shape? One plays sports. There are no magic pills here.

I believe I have mentioned that President Trump – well it’s his first presidential term and he’s gaining momentum, he’s building up his experience in this field and we’ve had a dialogue on this issue [North Korea]. He listens to what I’m saying, he listens to my arguments.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns.

I’ve read hundreds of books about China over the decades. I know the Chinese. I’ve made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind.

I am sick of all the chaos and the nastiness of our politics. It’s exhausting, and frankly, it’s depressing.

Powerful states have quite typically considered themselves to be exceptionally magnificent and the United States is no exception to that. The basis for it is not very substantial, to put it politely.

As we know, the goal of every struggle is victory. But if the proletariat is to achieve victory, all the workers, irrespective of nationality , must be united. Clearly, the demolition of national barriers and close unity between the Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Polish, Jewish and other proletarians is a necessary condition for the victory of the proletariat of all Russia.

The Middle East is hopeful. There’s hope there.

There are no morals in politics; the is only experience. A scoundrel may be of use because he is a scoundrel!

Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

I think the journey for a politician goes from wanting to please all the people all the time, to a political leader that realises in the end his responsibility is to decide. And when he decides, he divides.

The point [of the PR industry] is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information-and similarly, to undermine democracy by the same method.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Once wide coercive powers are given to government agencies…such powers cannot be effectively controlled.