Americans have a severe disease - worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex.
Mikhail GorbachevRead
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.
Interpretation
Gorbachev emphasizes that America should promote democratic values rather than consumerism, highlighting a disparity in living standards.
In this quote, Mikhail Gorbachev argues that the United States has a responsibility to lead by example in promoting democracy rather than merely showcasing its consumer-driven culture. He acknowledges the unrealistic expectations placed on other countries to achieve the same level of material wealth as America, suggesting that the focus should shift from consumerism to fostering democratic principles worldwide.
In practice
This quote can be used in a political speech to emphasize American values in foreign policy.
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.
I'm not saying Obama is right on everything. Of course not. He may be wrong on a number of things. But what I do know is that he behaves like a very, very sane man almost all the time.
Nowhere else in the world do the laws on firearms become the playthings of politicians and lobbyists intent on manufacturing cultural conflict. Nowhere else do elected officials turn the matter of taking a gun to church into a searing ideological question. But then, guns are not a religion in most countries.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
Representative democracy is a remarkably blunt instrument. Hundreds of issues are bundled together at every election, yet the vote tends to swing on just one or two of them.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
The United States has to move very fast to even stand still.
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