Americans have a severe disease - worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex.
Mikhail GorbachevRead
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.
Interpretation
The environmental issue will dominate our priorities in the 21st century and requires immediate action.
Mikhail Gorbachev emphasizes the urgency of addressing environmental problems, suggesting that they will be the most pressing concern of this century. He warns that such issues cannot be delayed any longer, highlighting the need for proactive measures to ensure a sustainable future for our planet.
In practice
In a conference about climate change, we could use this quote to stress the immediate need for action.
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.
The tropical rain forests are a telling example. Once cut down, they rarely recover. Rainfall drops, deserts spread, the climate warms.
I'd like to see the giant squid. Nobody has ever seen one. I could tell you people who have spent thousands and thousands of pounds trying to see giant squid. I mean, we know they exist because we have seen dead ones. But I have never seen a living one. Nor has anybody else.
We are using resources as if we had two planets, not one. There can be no 'plan B' because there is no 'planet B.'
How sublime to look down on the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet!
As a people, we have the problem of making our forests outlast this generation, or iron outlast this century, and our coal the next; not merely as a matter of convenience or comfort, but as a matter of stern necessity.
I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical. The same sun appeared each morning, swept over the valley, and dropped behind the peak. The snows that fell in winter always melted in the spring.
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