Mikhail Gorbachev

Americans have a severe disease - worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex.

Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep.

The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.

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

New approaches are needed, new orientations in both thought and action. We must make the transition to a new civilization...We are talking of a transition toward a new civilization. No one knows what it will be like. What is important is to orient in that direction... I am convinced that a new civilization will inevitably take on certain features that are characteristic of, or inherent in, the socialist ideal.

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.

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

In principle as a philosophy, a model of organising society, Communism has to be respected. As regards the use of certain methods to advance social justice and greater regulation by the state, there are certain methods that are useful. What we need is a new society, a new civilization and convergence of all that is best in both [Communism and Capitalism]

If current technological processes continue without change, the environment will change, and we, the human species, will either have to mutate or even die, to disappear, as many species have disappeared.

The socialist tradition....goes back to Jesus Christ,_x000D_ not (Karl) Marx.

I think the environmental problem will be the number one item on the agenda of the 21st century... This is a problem that cannot be postponed.

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.

People, human beings with all their creative diversity, are the makers of history.

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

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.

The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.

I paid too heavy a price for perestroika.

It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.

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.

Every country should conduct its own reforms, should develop its own model, taking into account the experience of other countries, whether close neighbours or far away countries.

Starting reforms in the Soviet Union was only possible from above, only from above. Any attempt to go from below was suppressed, suppressed in a most resolute way.