Masha Gessen Quotes

We have more billionaires than any country but the United States. And Putin can imprison any one of them at a moment’s notice. Do you think he is poor?

Both sides are so corrupt in Haiti that it doesn’t matter which one wins.

I'm not a big fan of Putin. I'm not a big fan of Russia.

Donald Trump is many things - a tantrum-throwing man-child and a wannabe strongman pining for his very own banana republic among them - but perhaps most of all he is a giant, melon-colored distraction from what is happening to our country under his watch.

I was a political journalist for a long time. I wrote a book about Putin. I made all kinds of trouble.

Putin sought to keep Ukraine weak through corruption.

Putin can't afford to leave the office because he will be in real danger of being prosecuted for things he and his people did during their stay in power.

The problem is never the populist’s imperfect capacity to represent the people’s will; rather, it’s always the institutions that somehow produced the wrong outcomes. So even if they look properly democratic, there must be something going on behind the scenes that allows corrupt elites to continue to betray the people. Conspiracy theories are thus not a curious addition to populist rhetoric; they are rooted in and emerge from the very logic of populism itself.

The United States must look beyond Mr. Putin. His regime may appear imposing, but it is rotting inside. His Russia is not a great power on par with America. It is a gas station run by a corrupt, autocratic regime.

Problems in our country haven't been caused by Donald Trump, America and its ambitions or CIA spies. Our problems are rooted in a bad government system, the lack of free elections, independent courts and freedom of speech.

Vladimir Putin has to create foreign enemies, and he also has to justify... he has to claim... he can't acknowledge that there's a legitimate protest against his authoritarian rule, so he's got to blame it on Hilary Clinton.

The problem with Russia is not corruption per se, or even Putin per se. Russian government is not corrupt because Vladimir Putin has absolute power. Russian government has been corrupt and will always be as long as anyone has absolute power.

We never make editorial decisions with people who are working closely with Vladimir Putin, unless you consider myself a person who is working closely with Vladimir Putin.

We have politicians that are grossly incompetent. We have leaders that are incompetent and we have negotiators that are incompetent.

Putin and his advisers don't understand the power of public opinion in the West. They believe in conspiracy theories and that someone is orchestrating a malicious campaign against Russia. They don't realize that even conservative politicians have to react when newspapers and artists express their concern on such an issue.

Washington is dominated by big money.

Everybody keeps saying that India's a poor country. Yes, we have poverty. But I blame the government of India, the political establishment, for their failure to educate and therefore their failure to control the poverty.

We've been saying Putin is a dictator for years who doesn't care about the law.

Few governments in the world, for example, praise human rights more ardently than does the government of France, and few have a worse record of supporting tyrants and killers.

With the people, for the people, by the people. I crack up when I hear it; I say, with the handful, for the handful, by the handful, cause that's what really happens.

There is a real and evident problem of democracy in Georgia, and this was the core reason of my entrance into politics. We have no rule of law. It's absolutely absent.

The incurably suspicious Arthur Lee, youngest brother of Richard Henry, was of opinion that what others termed 'errors' in the Constitution were a deliberate scheme to create an oligarchy.

What you and I understand as a government doesn't exist in many African countries. In fact, what we call our governments are vampire states. Vampires because they suck the economic vitality out of their people. Government is the problem in Africa.

The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

I think very poorly of United Russia. United Russia is the party of corruption, the party of crooks and thieves.