Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes

Vladimir Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible - a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments.

The role of Iran has been very destructive. As an Iranian, I apologize to the civilian people of Syria who have been killed as a result of the useless intervention of Iran in Syria.

We should certainly know by now that it is one thing to overthrow a dictator or repel an invader and quite another thing really to achieve a revolution. Time and time and time again, the people discover that they have merely betrayed themselves into the hands of yet another Pharaoh, who, since he was necessary to put the broken country together, will not let them go.

The only way to protect our people, the only way to secure the peace, the only way to control our destiny is by our leadership -- so the United States of America will continue to lead

The president sets the tone. He creates the atmosphere, and that can be enlightened, progressive, or it can be intimidating, depending on what the president's agenda is. I think the other dimension of this that I worry about is impacts overseas with friends and allies, many of whom are very, very concerned about America's position in the world and whether or not it's going to continue its leadership, which has been the prevalent condition since World War II.

[2015] it's a time that there's a clash of ideologies, similar to the Cold War. I think that a story like this has been waiting to be told, and I think it's a fresh look at the whole earth-shattering business of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Everywhere that I go in the world, people desperately look to American leadership in all of their world's most difficult problems. You can look at any region of the world and the United States is still the country to which those regions look for leadership.

People are saying, "Oh my God, Saudi Arabia has changed." It's a contradiction. Do you want us to lead, or do you want us to play a supporting role?

In foreign affairs we must make up our minds that whether we wish it or not, we are a great people and must play a great part in the world. It is not open to us to choose whether we will play that great part or not.

I'm interested in politics, what's going on in the world, how people behave and how your life is often in the hands of other people.

Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the early twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands.

Ro trails his hands against the wall as he walks. The archivists look at him as he passes. Ro is good at irritating people; he'll find the one thing you don't want him to do, and do it every time. It's one of his many gifts.

The expiatory church of La Sagrada Família is made by the people and is mirrored in them. It is a work that is in the hands of God and the will of the people.

One thing that's clear in the Scriptures is that the nations do not lead people to peace; rather, people lead the nations to peace.

Lange was hosting a reception at Vogel House for the Chinese politician Hu Yao Bang when the lights went out. Lange immediately asked all the guests to raise their hands because "many hands make light work." The audience complied, and to their amazement the lights immediately came back on. Lange was invited to visit China.

Vladimir Putin knows exactly what he wants from the relationship with USA. In return for good relations, he wants lifting of sanctions, ratification, approval of his wars in Ukraine and Syria, and his dream of dreams, an acknowledgment of his sphere of influence in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modem people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.

People should make distinctions between the office of the presidency and the person who occupies it. You can respect the office even as you lose respect for the individual.

The USA is a threat to world peace. Who are they to pretend that they are the policemen of the world, the ones that should decide for the people of Iraq what should be done with their government and their leadership. All that [the USA] wants is Iraqi oil. [Blair is] simply the foreign minister of the United States. He is no longer prime minister of Britain.

I was going to be a teacher and improve the world. Teach people with hooks for hands to fingerpaint, and teach bums to draw happy faces on beads.

It's so much better to hand over a finished book than having all these people waiting.

I'm enormously interested in freedom and retaining the right to have whatever economy we want and to shape it as we want and a having sufficient Democracy so that the people actually hold their Government in their own hands.

Maybe we're all a little too desperate these days for a simple formula to explain how our safe world came unhinged. That, as much as anything, may explain one of the more enduring conspiracy theories of the moment, the notion that we are about to send a quarter of a million American soldiers to war for the sake of Israel.

We need to support the governments of the world to create the world we want and I also think we need to empower the UN so that the secretariat, the people who work day in and day out, know that the people are behind them.