Top 100 Quotes About Mikhail Gorbachev
#1. I was named after the great emperor Cyrus as my father, Farokh Broacha, was a great admirer of the Persian emperor. Continuing the tradition, I have named my son after Mikhail Gorbachev, someone whom I admire. He gave his people freedom.
Cyrus Broacha
#2. Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.
P. J. O'Rourke
#3. I have Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to thank that a Russian writer can not only write anything he wants, but also publish it.
Vladimir Sorokin
#4. On March 11, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union, and within a few weeks the full-scale reformation he attempted to carry out both inside his country and in its cold war relations with the West, particularly the United States, began to unfold.
Stephen Cohen
#5. I would like to meet Mikhail Gorbachev. I think it would be great to sit in a room with him ... and try to make peace.
Donnie Wahlberg
#6. It is a great honor for me to be presented the award by Mikhail Gorbachev and also to be acknowledged with the World Actress Award at the Women World Awards Gala 2005.
Teri Hatcher
#7. 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
#8. To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#10. The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. I believe, as Lenin said, that this revolutionary chaos may yet crystallize into new forms of life.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#15. We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#16. Putin wants to stay in power, but not so that he can finally solve our most pressing problems: education, health care, poverty.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. For the first time ever, we have confronted in reality the sinister power of uncontrolled nuclear energy.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#25. If people don't like Marxism, they should blame the British Museum.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#26. 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
#27. I think God has some mechanism that he uses to punish those that make mistakes.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#28. America has a right to be a leader. This leadership should be realized through partnership, not domination.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. Contemporary social democracy is what I believe is the right concept.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#33. God has given us enough wisdom to make improvements in our relations.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#34. 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
#35. 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
#37. What about Jesus Christ? I say that he was a precursor of idealists; a precursor of socialists.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#38. Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#39. The time has come to choose a new direction of global development, to opt for a new civilization.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#41. 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
#42. A New World Order is required to deal with the Climate Change crisis.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#44. Montreal, this wonderful town ... Pearl of Canada, Pearl of the world.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#45. We were nearly one of the last to realize that in the age of
information science the most expensive asset is knowledge.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. There should be competition and exchanges between different countries, but there are certainly certain universal values, and that is freedom and democracy.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#51. More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#52. 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
#53. Ex-Presidents of the United States get state subsidies. Not so in Russia. You get no government support.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. What we're talking about is creating new forms of life on the basis of new values.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#58. 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
#59. 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
#61. Americans have a severe disease - worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#62. My goal was to avoid bloodshed. But unfortunately there was some bloodshed, after all.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#63. 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
#64. A new generation of more educated people started to be active. Then society required freedom, society demanded freedom.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#66. If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven't done much today.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#67. 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
#68. 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
#70. Ideological and political intolerance, even with the best and most sincere intentions, produces results that are the direct opposite of those intended.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#71. It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#72. 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
#73. People, human beings with all their creative diversity, are the makers of history.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. I am a Communist, a convinced Communist! For some that may be a fantasy. But to me it is my main goal.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. Sometimes when you stand face to face with someone, you cannot see his face.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#84. In Russia, there are those who make their money in criminal ways, but I earn everything myself.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#85. The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#86. 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
Mikhail Gorbachev
#87. Globalization was supposed to break down barriers between continents and bring all peoples together. But what kind of globalization do we have with over one billion people on the planet not having safe water to drink?
Mikhail Gorbachev
#90. It will be difficult, even painful, but democracy will prevail in Russia. There will be no dictatorship, although relapses into authoritarianism are possible.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#91. The threat of environmental crisis is the 'international disaster key' to unlock the New World Order.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#92. You are fortunate to live here. If I were your President, I would levy a tax on you for living in San Francisco!
Mikhail Gorbachev
#93. For a new type of progress throughout the world to become a reality, everyone must change. Tolerance is the alpha and omega of a new world order.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#94. Even today, a majority of people surveyed say that they regret the fact that the USSR collapsed. But only 9 percent say that they would want it back.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#95. Today, peace means the ascent from simple coexistence to cooperation and common creativity among countries and nations.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#96. Sometimes people ask me why I began perestroika. Were the causes basically domestic or foreign? The domestic reasons were undoubtedly the main ones, but the danger of nuclear war was so serious that it was a no less significant factor.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#97. Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#98. You cannot go to sleep with one form of economic system and wake up the next morning with another.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#99. The opponents of perestroika had suffered a defeat, and then they organized the coup.
Mikhail Gorbachev
#100. We need a new environmental consciousness on a global basis. To do this, we need to educate people.
Mikhail Gorbachev
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