Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes

More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life.

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

We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.

With Yeltsin, the Soviet Union broke apart, the country was totally mismanaged, the constitution was not respected by the regions of Russia. The army, education and health systems collapsed. People in the West quietly applauded, dancing with and around Yeltsin. I conclude therefore that we should not pay too much attention to what the West is saying.

I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos.

Our rockets can find Halley's comet, and fly to Venus with amazing accuracy, but side by side with these scientific and technical triumphs is an obvious lack of efficiency in using scientific achievements for economic needs. Many Soviet household appliances are of poor quality.

The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously.

Putin wants to stay in power, but not so that he can finally solve our most pressing problems: education, health care, poverty.

Man is beginning to explore the galaxy. But how much remains undone on earth?

Today, peace means the ascent from simple coexistence to cooperation and common creativity among countries and nations.

A new world order is taking shape so fast that governments as well as private citizens find it difficult just to absorb the gallop of events.

The Union was destroyed against the will of the people, and it was done deliberately - with the participation of the Russian leadership, on the one hand, and that of the putschists, on the other.

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

To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.

If people don't like Marxism, they should blame the British Museum.

Nature is reminding us that it used to exist without human beings.

We are beginning to see practical support. And this is a very significant sign of the movement towards a new era, a new age.... We see both in our country and elsewhere... ghosts of the old thinking.... When we rid ourselves of their presence, we will be better able to move toward a new world order...relying on the relevent mechanisms of the United Nations.

If not me, who? And if not now, when?

I envisage the prinicles of the Earth Charter to be a new form of the ten commandments. They lay the foundation for a sustainable global earth community.

The emerging 'environmentalization' of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government.

We must treat water as if it were the most precious thing in the world, the most valuable natural resource. Be economical with water! Don't waste it! We still have time to do something about this problem before it is too late.

In October 1917, we parted with the old world, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a new world, a world of Communism. We shall never turn off that road.

I will never give up politics. I've tried to give it up three times, but I never made it. Politics mobilizes me. I won't last long if I give it up.

We used to have just one criterion and that was profit, and then another criterion was added - social welfare. Now we have to add the third important criterion, and that is nature and the environment.

The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.

In our discussions here at the forum there was no trace of the futile debate about what is better, capitalism or socialism...We should seek a synthesis of ideas and values that have proven their viability.

Without perestroika, the cold war simply would not have ended. But the world could not continue developing as it had, with the stark menace of nuclear war ever present.

In Russia, there are those who make their money in criminal ways, but I earn everything myself.

The human race has entered a stage where we are all dependent on each other. No other country or nation should be regarded in total separation from another, let alone pitted against another.

Not only America but all countries should think together about how the enormous might of the sole remaining superpower should be used. We need a leadership that is based on partnership, a leadership that unites nations and makes it possible to solve the problems of the globe together. Otherwise, we will have another Gold Rush for a superpower that wants to gain even greater advantages, that wants to gain an absolutely new position for itself. That would lead to a perverse utopia.

The threat of environmental crisis is the 'international disaster key' to unlock the New World Order.

It's America calling the shots in everything

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.

It is better to see once than to hear a hundred times.

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

...the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant...has painfully affected the Soviet people, and shocked the international community. For the first time, we confront the real force of nuclear energy, out of control.

Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.

We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren't enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.

Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government.

According to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible.... The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy and revives the Leninist concept of socialist construction both in theory and in practice. We want more socialism and, therefore, more democracy.

God has given us enough wisdom to make improvements in our relations.

Sometimes its difficult to accept, to recognise ones own mistakes, but one must do it. I was guilty of overconfidence and arrogance, and I was punished for that.

One of the reasons why this country undertook military action in Iraq was that there are quite a few problems here, and perhaps attention needed to be deflected from those problems. It sometimes seems that the U.S. economy works successfully only if it gets a stimulus from the defense industry. So perhaps in addition to showing the power and the might of the United States internationally, another reason was to help the defense industry and to help the U.S. economy recover.

Life punishes those who come too late.

The most important thing is who counts the votes.

The threat of a world war is no more.

I certainly wouldn't say that we loved the arms race. Trillions of dollars were used to stoke it. For our economy, which was smaller in size than the American economy, it was a burden. But one cannot agree with the statement that the arms race played the key role in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.