There is only one Art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth.

Without commonly shared and widely entrenched moral values and obligations, neither the law, nor democratic government, nor even the market economy will function properly.

If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.

Human rights, human freedoms... and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world... while the state is a human creation, human beings are the creation of God.

If [Western] relations with Russia are to be friendly, they must be open and sincere, otherwise there can be no friendship at all. That means one should be able to speak openly about everything at meetings and conferences. It shouldn't be that we can't discuss the killing of journalists in Russia, or the suppression of human rights, or all the warning signs surfacing in Russia because of oil and gas or other economic reasons. It's a big problem, but it's the same in Western relations with Arab states.

We are the first atheistic and global, all-embracing civilization. You cannot tell whether you are sitting at an airport in Hong Kong or in a hotel in Alaska. Everything is instrumentalized, subjected to a short-term purpose. It is quite possible that in such a situation any sense of a deeper meaning gets lost.

Ultimately, power only really listens to power, and if government is to be improved, we must be able to threaten its existence, not merely its reputation.