Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes

Democratic reform, depends less on legislative amendments than on creating a climate of democracy.

Too often reform involves the mechanics of change rather than the underlying values.

Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.

We keep looking at democratization as an event—like the fall of the Berlin Wall—but it’s actually a process.

Democracy spreads through the workings of the market when people apply the habits and procedures they are already carrying out in one sector of the social life (the economy) to another one (the political arena). The market is to democracy what a grain of sand is to an oyster’s pearl: the core around which it forms.

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.

We can change the direction of the country with our vote.

Economic disasters or foolish wars are hardly guaranteed to bring about large-scale individual self-examination or renew the appeal of truly participatory democracy.

We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country.

Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.

Society has to change, but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought.

Many still believe that conducting political and economic reforms at the same time is not an Asian way. But this is a fairy-tale. We broke that old stereotype by reforming our political, economic and social systems concurrently since 1990.

I noticed that democracy was broken and tried to work on fixing that in Japan. Then I realized that it was broken all over the place and decided to work on that too.

The whole idea of a democracy is that we ourselves, the people, are supposed to make a path of our politics, and it is we who with our feet and our vote and our labors and our vigilance are supposed to shape our country.

Therefore, until the day I die, I am going to do what I can, regardless of the cost to me, to try to stop this awful corruption that is destroying our beloved democracy.

The youth movement is aware that old visions can not take Egypt into the future.

My father was criticized as a dictator, but that should not overshadow his accomplishments in restructuring the country. He brought Korea out of 5,000 years of poverty. What he left unaccomplished was democratization of the system.

History's lesson is to make the most of reform opportunities when they arise because they do not arise often and they do not last long.

King's response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a reevaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.

There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing and electoral politics.

My message is that Democracy is not an alien invention. It is a way of solving problems in our society.

For politics to change … culture must change too --- and that takes much more than dispatching troops, holding elections, and writing constitutions.

When women are pessimistic about their political strength and feel hopeless about changing the conditions of their lives, it is almost as if they do not believe that democracy means the country belongs to them. But it's true.

A democratic form of government, a democratic way of life, presupposes free public education over a long period; it presupposes also an education for personal responsibility that too often is neglected.

Democracy means not merely, I had almost said not so much, the rights of the whole people, as the duties of the whole people.