Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes - Page 6

Putin wants to stay in power, but not so that he can finally solve our most pressing problems: education, health care, poverty.

If the Russian word "perestroika" has easily entered the international lexicon, this is due to more than just interest in what is going on in the Soviet Union. Now the whole world needs restructuring, i.e. progressive development, a fundamental change.

I am an optimist and I believe that together we shall be able now to make the right historical choice so as not to miss the great chance at the turn of centuries and millenia and make the current extremely difficult transition to a peaceful world order.

The Union was destroyed against the will of the people, and it was done deliberately - with the participation of the Russian leadership, on the one hand, and that of the putschists, on the other.

Some think that Russia should become a kind of a U.S. province, where it should supply natural resources to the United States and the rest of the world. But these people ignore one very important thing: The Russian people will never agree to this scenario. Russia is ultimately a self-sufficient country.

The world's deteriorating ecology poses as great a danger to mankind today as did the nuclear standoff between the superpowers at the height of the Cold War.

Without glasnost there is not, and there cannot be, democratism, the political creativity of the masses and their participation in management.

The threat of a world war is no more.

Politics is my second love, next to my love for Raisa [Gorbacheva].

The shortage of fresh water is the major ecological problem of this moment.

I believe, as Lenin said, that this revolutionary chaos may yet crystallize into new forms of life.

For the first time ever, we have confronted in reality the sinister power of uncontrolled nuclear energy.

I envisage the prinicles of the Earth Charter to be a new form of the ten commandments. They lay the foundation for a sustainable global earth community.

We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.

What we're talking about is creating new forms of life on the basis of new values.

The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism. ... If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism.

Today, peace means the ascent from simple coexistence to cooperation and common creativity among countries and nations.

Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

A new generation of more educated people started to be active. Then society required freedom, society demanded freedom.

The United States found dozens of billions of dollars for military action in Iraq, so it should certainly be able to find a few billions of dollars to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. I'll assume that since the most powerful nation - the United States - has promised to pay for much of this, then its word will be kept. If it isn't, I don't think we can have a true partnership.

I will never give up politics. I've tried to give it up three times, but I never made it. Politics mobilizes me. I won't last long if I give it up.

My goal was to avoid bloodshed. But unfortunately there was some bloodshed, after all.

The opponents of perestroika had suffered a defeat, and then they organized the coup.