Many people who live in big countries like ours thought that we had resources that would work for us for many, many years, but that was a mistake. Our natural wealth corrupted us. In this country, you were among the first to raise environmental issues. In Russia, despite all of its problems today, people are concerned about the environment, and it's become a central issue on the agenda.

A society should never become like a pond with stagnant water, without movement. That's the most important thing.

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.

Montreal, this wonderful town… Pearl of Canada, Pearl of the world.

A new generation of more educated people started to be active. Then society required freedom, society demanded freedom.

Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

We could still have continued the arms race, but the arms race was pointless, and it was another reason we decided to start perestroika. It was senseless to continue to accumulate weapons. We had enough weapons to destroy life on Earth 1,000 times, and therefore it was very clear to us that the arms race could spiral out of control. A conflict could have started, as both the Americans and the Soviets realized, not out of a wrong political decision but because of a failure in the command-and-control systems.