Sometimes when you stand face to face with someone, you cannot see his face.

Please remember one lesson of the 20th century. One cannot force happiness, impose happiness on nations by imposing any kind of utopia on others. The Communist model of society was a kind of imposed utopia for which the Russian people in particular paid a great price. Still, sometimes we see that attempts are being made to impose some other kind of model on the entire world - maybe a Westernized or Americanized model... This is not the way to go because this can only create conflict.

America must be the teacher of democracy, not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard.

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.

I remember Secretary of State [George] Shultz one day saying that America is an economic model for the world. I replied to him that America represents 5 percent of the world's population and consumes 30 percent of the world's energy. What if everyone in the world lives like Americans? Where do we get the energy for this standard of living?

I think the United States is sick. It suffers from the sickness, the disease of being the victor and it needs to cure itself from this disease.

The problem the world faces today is that only one-third of the world's population lives in decent circumstances, while half the population of the world lives on one or two dollars a day. And even as we have this poverty and backwardness, we are facing a global environmental crisis. We need developmental models that will take into account the specific and unique position of each country and at the same time will address the environmental crisis.