Top 100 Gorbachev's Quotes
#1. Gorbachev's stance contrasts admirably with the policy of the sainted Abraham Lincoln, who used massive force and mass murder to force the seceding Southern states to remain in the Union.
Murray Rothbard
#2. I left Gorbachev's office thinking that everything about him was outsized: his achievements, his mistakes, and, now, his vanity and bitterness.
David Remnick
#3. Pavel Palazchenko has given us a well-written, inside account of Gorbachev's and Shevardnadze's diplomacy. Remarkably objective, it is full of insights, makes fascinating reading, and will also be a prime source for scholars long into the future.
Jack F. Matlock Jr.
#4. It's Bush's baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler 'new order' root; F.D.R. used the phrase earlier.
William Safire
#5. More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#6. It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#7. Ideological and political intolerance, even with the best and most sincere intentions, produces results that are the direct opposite of those intended.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#9. Every part of our program of perestroika - and the program as a whole, for that matter - is fully based on the principle of more socialism and more democracy.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#10. I have long ago made a final and irrevocable decision. Nothing and no one, no pressure, cither from the right or from the left, will make me abandon the positions of perestroika and new thinking. I do not intend to change my views or convictions. My choice is a final one.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#11. If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven't done much today.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#13. A new generation of more educated people started to be active. Then society required freedom, society demanded freedom.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#14. It sometimes seems to me that some of our Western partners do not want Russia to fully recover. They would like Russia to be in a subdued state, and they want Russian resources to be used for the benefit of the U.S. economy.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#15. My goal was to avoid bloodshed. But unfortunately there was some bloodshed, after all.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#16. Americans have a severe disease - worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#18. The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#19. Lake Baikal in Russia has 25 percent of the freshwater resources of the world. Sixty-five percent of the Russian ecosystems are in danger. So let's preserve what we have, and let's take good care of nature.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#20. What we're talking about is creating new forms of life on the basis of new values.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#21. Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#22. It is really important to solve the problem of rational utilization and distribution of wate supplies. I dare say, the shortage of fresh water is the major ecological problem of this moment.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#23. The essential meaning of perestroika for Gorbachev and his supporters was creating and acting on alternatives to failed and dangerous policies at home and abroad.
Stephen Cohen
#24. Certain people in the United States are driving nails into this structure of our relationship, then cutting off the heads. So the Soviets must use their teeth to pull them out.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#25. Ex-Presidents of the United States get state subsidies. Not so in Russia. You get no government support.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#26. Communist ideology in its pure form is akin to
Christianity. Its main ideas are the brotherhood of all
peoples irrespective of their nationality, justice and
equality, peace, and an end to all hostility between
peoples.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#27. 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.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#28. Starting reforms in the Soviet Union was only possible from above, only from above. Any attempt to go from below was suppressed, suppressed in a most resolute way.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#29. We have no right ever to forget that psychological warfare
is a struggle for winning people's minds.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#30. I don't think Russia is setting this as a goal; I don't think this should be Russia's goal. I think even the United States doesn't need to be a superpower. China doesn't need to be a superpower. It's a different world.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#31. A society should never become like a pond with stagnant water, without movement. That's the most important thing.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#32. 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.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#33. Sometimes it's difficult to accept, to recognise one's own mistakes, but one must do it. I was guilty of overconfidence and arrogance, and I was punished for that.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#34. Our rockets can find Halley's comet, and fly to Venus with amazing accuracy, but side by side with these scientific and technical triumphs is an obvious lack of efficiency in using scientific achievements for economic needs ... many Soviet household appliances are of poor quality.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#36. In Russia, there are those who make their money in criminal ways, but I earn everything myself.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#37. Sometimes when you stand face to face with someone, you cannot see his face.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#38. 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.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#39. Gorbachev warns of major war in Europe over Ukraine.
Reuters
#40. I certainly wouldn't say that we loved the arms race. Trillions of dollars were used to stoke it. For our economy, which was smaller in size than the American economy, it was a burden. But one cannot agree with the statement that the arms race played the key role in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#41. In our discussions here at the forum there was no trace of the futile debate about what is better, capitalism or socialism ... We should seek a synthesis of ideas and values that have proven their viability ...
Mikhail Gorbachev
#42. I think we need more young people; we need to elect young people to government. We need to give them a chance, in the media, in politics, in democracy.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#43. Mr. Gorbachev has apparently stumbled onto one of the best-kept secrets in recent Soviet history: Communism doesn't work.
Frank Zappa
#44. Gorbachev was acutely aware of the [USSR] economic problems, and it was central to all he did. He wanted to change the system in hopes of saving it. In the end he could not.
David Hoffman
#45. The human race has entered a stage where we are all dependent on each other. No other country or nation should be regarded in total separation from another, let alone pitted against another.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#46. I am a Communist, a convinced Communist! For some that may be a fantasy. But to me it is my main goal.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#47. If current technological processes continue without change, the environment will change, and we, the human species, will either have to mutate or even die, to disappear, as many species have disappeared.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#48. We must treat water as if it were the most precious thing in the world, the most valuable natural resource. Be economical with water! Don't waste it! We still have time to do something about this problem before it is too late.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#50. People, human beings with all their creative diversity, are the makers of history.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#51. Despite his deeply-held ideology, Reagan was willing to talk to Gorbachev. He willing to do business with him. We should realize that engaging with adversaries is often one of our great strengths. As long as we use the engagement to stand up for the things we care about, there is no harm in talking.
David Hoffman
#52. It seems that the most important thing about Reagan was his anti-Communism and his reputation as a hawk who saw the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire.'
Mikhail Gorbachev
#53. America has a right to be a leader. This leadership should be realized through partnership, not domination.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#54. I think God has some mechanism that he uses to punish those that make mistakes.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#55. I couldn't wait to get to the most powerful position, because I thought then I would be able to fix problems that only the leader can fix. But when I got there, I realized we needed revolutionary change.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#56. I couldn t help but say to Mr. Gorbachev just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet. We d find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together
Ronald Reagan
#57. If people don't like Marxism, they should blame the British Museum.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#59. For the first time ever, we have confronted in reality the sinister power of uncontrolled nuclear energy.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#60. Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize: Violence has no way to conceal itself except by lies, and lies have no way to maintain themselves except through violence. Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#61. When I cleared out Moscow apartment after stepping down as president, they found all kinds of wiring in the walls. It turned out that they had been spying on me all along.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#63. One day we took each other by the hand and went for a walk in the evening. And we walked like that for our whole life.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#64. 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.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#65. 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.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#66. Putin wants to stay in power, but not so that he can finally solve our most pressing problems: education, health care, poverty.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#67. We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#68. I believe, as Lenin said, that this revolutionary chaos may yet crystallize into new forms of life.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#69. 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.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#70. 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.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#71. Surely, God on high has not refused to give us enough wisdom to find ways to bring us an improvement in relations between the two great nations on earth.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#72. But how reassuring it was for us, you remember, every now and then ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"), to vibrate to the music of the very heartstrings of the Leader of the Free World who, to qualify convincingly as such, had after all to feel a total commitment to the Free World.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#73. The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#75. To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#76. 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.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#77. The time has come to choose a new direction of global development, to opt for a new civilization.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#78. 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.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#79. I support freedom and I support a free market economy, but it should be a socially oriented market economy. I support globalization, but it should be globalization with a human face.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#80. According to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible ... The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy and revives the Leninist concept of socialist construction both in theory and in practice. We want more socialism and, therefore, more democracy.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#81. Humankind has no option but to protect and live in harmony with its natural environment. However, it would be regrettable if in putting an end to revolutionary extremism, we should then come to environmental extremism. We should not forget that all extremes are the same.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#82. We were nearly one of the last to realize that in the age of
information science the most expensive asset is knowledge.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#83. I disapproved of the fact that the government here refused to adopt the few reforms that Gorbachev put over in the field of media and the field of culture.
Stefan Heym
#84. Montreal, this wonderful town ... Pearl of Canada, Pearl of the world.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#86. A New World Order is required to deal with the Climate Change crisis.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#87. It will not be enough to rely on experts. Ordinary citizens must become experts too. It will take public opinion on a wide scale to ensure that world leaders act.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#89. There should be competition and exchanges between different countries, but there are certainly certain universal values, and that is freedom and democracy.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#90. Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#91. What about Jesus Christ? I say that he was a precursor of idealists; a precursor of socialists.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#93. We used to have just one criterion and that was profit, and then another criterion was added - social welfare. Now we have to add the third important criterion, and that is nature and the environment.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#94. 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.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#95. God has given us enough wisdom to make improvements in our relations.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#96. Us reaching the moon convinced Gorbachev and other leaders that the Soviet Union couldn't compete with the U.S., so they revised their agenda. But people have short memories.
Buzz Aldrin
#98. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. And get a massage - you look really stressed
Ronald Reagan
#99. Contemporary social democracy is what I believe is the right concept.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#100. I think the environmental problem will be the number one item on the agenda of the 21st century ... This is a problem that cannot be postponed.
Mikhail Gorbachev
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