Fortunes are made, and disappear, over the lifetime of a single generation. Today, a person in essence takes his wealth from society just for the duration of his or her lifetime. The next generation has to create it anew.
Mikhail KhodorkovskyPutin has an obvious problem. His country's economy is in stagnation. He needs to constantly be pointing a figure at who is at fault. America is at fault. He needs to show those fronts - those directions in which he is defeating America. In Syria, for example, in Syria, he is defeating America; not ISIS, he's defeating America.
Mikhail KhodorkovskyPeople take the lazy way out, and do not regard Putin and the Kremlin as the real enemy. They create a long but erroneous chain in their heads. Putin is the leader of Russia. Putin does X, therefore Russia is doing X, and Russia is our enemy. And so, we introduce sanctions, for example, against Russia.
Mikhail KhodorkovskyI knew President Yeltsin well. He would never have tolerated government officials demonstratively showing off the millions they acquired through corruption, the way it's done today.
Mikhail KhodorkovskyI am working in my office. I've got a boss who tells me what to do. He's got a boss who tells him what to do. And above him is another boss who probably is telling my boss in the same way - or my boss' boss in the same way what to do. In actuality, this is not the way things work. Management science says that that kind of a chain doesn't work more than three levels up.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky