Vladimir Putin Quotes

I think it's fair to say there is a demagogic path that Europeans, South Americans, Asians have pursued, and we know where that leads. It uses xenophobia, it uses paranoia, it uses prejudice, it uses nationalism to really stir people up and to, you know, begin an us-versus-them contrast, which is dangerous and is not something we've had in our politics at a presidential level in America.

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

I've looked at all of Hitler's speeches thinking that there's gotta be one where he's 'I'm Hitler!', but there weren't any. His speeches were all about hope and prosperity - he ran on a platform of peace and prosperity. Hitler speeches that makes him sound like a villain are pretty hard to find, he was very detached from what he was doing, he kept himself compartmentalised from it.

Political populism always poses a great danger because it disorients people, creates excessive expectations or, on the contrary, prioritises objectives that are clearly not priorities or are simply impossible to achieve.

I think my main concern is because I worry about demagoguery. It's real. You see the people standing up there and applauding.

Nobody is going to be as bad for free thinking, right-minded individuals than George Bush.

Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster.

Nobody would seriously describe a tiny child as a Marxist child or an Anarchist child or a Post-modernist child. Yet children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents. We need to encourage people to think carefully before labelling any child too young to know their own opinions and our adverts will help to do that.

I don't have any problem with a reporter or a news person who says the President is uninformed on this issue or that issue. I don't think any of us would challenge that. I do have a problem with the singular focus on this, as if that's the only standard by which we ought to judge a president. What we learned in the last administration was how little having an encyclopedic grasp of all the facts has to do with governing.

If the handbag could think, it would have a terrific inferiority feeling, because, not having been bought, it would feel useless.

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues.

There are too many people who imagine that there is something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your country, and the worst of those who defend it.

Reason and truth have rarely prevailed against demagoguery when the audience is too ignorant to tell the difference.

I don't like debates anyway. I have never debated anyone, I think they're a very masculine form - like an intellectual prizefight. They let you know who the better debater is but they don't really tell you about the issue. It's all heat, but no light.

If you go against someone, you say, you can't vote for these Democrats, they don't have good values, they're not good people, they're weak, they're spineless, they're don't love America, they're giving aid and comfort to Saddam Hussein, that's the kind of thing I think is bad for America, because it stops the voters from thinking. And any time you stop thinking in a free society you get in trouble.

Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one's mind. You see it a lot with T.V. preachers (many have minds made of cabbage) but it can also happen with political ideology. When you're young it's easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you're a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you're doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you're gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very, very careful of this ideology. It's a big danger.

I think we have to choose, what are the issues that really matter? We have to trust that.

I often quote Hitler, who said words to the effect of, "Rulers are fortunate that the people do not think." Politicians know this. Even when the public seems to be upset, the politicians know if they can put on a brave face and ride it out, they generally will.

Populism is everywhere. We have religious populism in the Muslim-majority countries as much as we have populism in the United States of America.

I think liberal art faculties at major universities have views that are not very sound, at least on public policy issues - they may know a lot of French however.

I think Donald Trump thinks of Putin as being a strong person, and I think he thinks of himself as being a very strong person. But I don't think in any way that he thinks of the Putin government as a desirable model.

I think his [Bernie Sanders] campaign was good for the Democratic Party, good for our country. And I know how passionate he is about the issues he cares about. So we'll have a long list of matters to discuss when we sit down.

One of the problems with watching TV is that you've got a fairly low level of language operating all the time. Quite a small vocabulary and really no conceptual or abstract thinking. That's an issue. If you've got a wide vocabulary, you can learn. The complexities of grammar, in themselves, force you to think about time in a particular way. Force you to widen your outlook on the world.

I went as an observer, not a participant, for I do not think that I ever spoke. I wanted to understand the issues under discussion, evaluate the arguments, see the calibre of the men involved.

I don't watch TV. I think that tends to polarize us and diminish important issues.