Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes

Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.

If not me, who? And if not now, when?

The threat of environmental crisis is the 'international disaster key' to unlock the New World Order.

Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep.

If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you. You haven't done much today.

History is a capricious creature. It depends on who writes it.

We are all passengers aboard one ship, the Earth, and we must not allow it to be wrecked. There will be no second Noah's Ark.

The social model of the Bolsheviks failed, as will any model that denies individual rights, intellectual freedom, and freedom of competing political parties. Without these freedoms and rights, there is no motivation for people to work. Such a system cannot be sustained, especially in light of the technological revolution of the information era.

I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Being at one with nature.

The most important thing is who counts the votes.

Sometimes its difficult to accept, to recognise ones own mistakes, but one must do it. I was guilty of overconfidence and arrogance, and I was punished for that.

It is better to see once than to hear a hundred times.

I think the United States is sick. It suffers from the sickness, the disease of being the victor and it needs to cure itself from this disease.

When future generations judge those who came before them on environmental issues, they may conclude "they didn't know": let us not go down in history as the generations who knew, but didn't care

We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren't enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.

Those who are late will be punished by life itself.

A New World Order is required to deal with the Climate Change crisis.

We had 10 years after the Cold War to build a new world order and yet we squandered them. The United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently. Every US president has to have a war.

Americans have a severe disease - worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex.

The problem the world faces today is that only one-third of the world's population lives in decent circumstances, while half the population of the world lives on one or two dollars a day. And even as we have this poverty and backwardness, we are facing a global environmental crisis. We need developmental models that will take into account the specific and unique position of each country and at the same time will address the environmental crisis.

In October 1917, we parted with the old world, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a new world, a world of Communism. We shall never turn off that road.

To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.

Please remember one lesson of the 20th century. One cannot force happiness, impose happiness on nations by imposing any kind of utopia on others. The Communist model of society was a kind of imposed utopia for which the Russian people in particular paid a great price. Still, sometimes we see that attempts are being made to impose some other kind of model on the entire world - maybe a Westernized or Americanized model... This is not the way to go because this can only create conflict.

No one, no single center, can today command the world. No single group of countries can do it. Under the current U.S. president, I don't think we can fundamentally change the situation as it is developing now. It is dangerous. The world is experiencing a period of growing global disarray.

It will be difficult, even painful, but democracy will prevail in Russia. There will be no dictatorship, although relapses into authoritarianism are possible.