Vladimir Putin

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this.

For Russia, there is not and there may not be another political option but democracy. However, Russian democracy is… not at all the realization of standards imposed on us from outside.

Europeans are dying out. Don’t you understand that? And same-sex marriages don’t produce children. Do you want to survive by drawing migrants? But society cannot adapt so many migrants.

Cromwell is just as much of a bloody dictator as was Stalin.

I think the international community should unite to fight such inhuman phenomena as terror attacks and the murder of totally innocent people.

Our aims are absolutely clear: They are a high living standard in the country and a secure, free and comfortable life.

The Pentagon is in no sense a defense department. It has never defended the United States from anyone. It has only served to conduct aggression. And I think that the American people would be much better off without a Pentagon.

Some of the slave-owners, like Jefferson, appreciated the moral turpitude on which the economy relied. But he feared the liberation of slaves, who have ‘ten thousand recollections’ of the crimes to which they were subjected.

The “We are America, bitch” posture appeals to chauvinistic instincts and the white supremacy that is a deeply rooted feature of American culture and is now exacerbated by concern that whites might even become a minority.I don’t incidentally suggest that the [media] deceit is conscious. Much more likely, it’s just the enormous power of conformity to convention, to what Gramsci called hegemonic “common sense.” Some ideas are not even rejected; they are unthinkable.

While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the real truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors, he is a moral coward.

I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I’ve been challenged by so many people, and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either.

We have a planetary emergency. We have to find a way to create, in the generation of those alive today, a sense of generational mission.

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

[on the 2016 election] When the most qualified person running was a woman, and look what we did instead, I mean that says something about where we are. That’s what we have to explore, because if we as women are still suspicious of one another, if we still have this crazy, crazy bar for each other that we don’t have for men… if we’re not comfortable with the notion that a woman could be our president compared to… what, then we have to have those conversations with ourselves as women.

Look, freedom is an overwhelming American notion. The idea that we want to see the world, the peoples of the world free is something that all of us subscribe to.

We have to fight. We have to fight against propaganda and crackpot conspiracy theories. We have to fight isolationism, protectionism, and nativism. We have to defeat those who would worsen our divisions. We have to remind our sons and daughters that we became the most powerful nation on Earth by tearing down walls, not building them.

The general threat has always been independence. The US and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.

There is no meeting of minds, no point of understanding with such terror. Just a choice: Defeat it or be defeated by it. And defeat it we must.

I want every individual who has the potential and qualifications to succeed in higher education to be given the opportunity to participate, whatever their family background.

Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.

I’m a conservative, but I’m not a nut about it.