Americans have a severe disease - worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex.
Mikhail GorbachevRead
The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.
Interpretation
The market is a fundamental aspect of human society, not just a capitalist concept.
Mikhail Gorbachev emphasizes that markets have been integral to human civilization throughout history, suggesting that they are not exclusive to capitalist systems. This viewpoint encourages a broader understanding of economic systems, indicating that the marketplace is a fundamental social construct that has evolved over time, entwined with the development of civilization itself.
In practice
In a discussion about economic history, one might quote Gorbachev to highlight the ancient roots of trade.
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.
Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason.
but one loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps.
The pavilion that seems to intercept divine aid does not cover God but occasionally covers us. God is never hidden, yet sometimes we are, covered by a pavilion of motivations that draw us away from God and make Him seem distant and inaccessible.
A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
Each of us sees in others what we carry in our own hearts.
As for politics, Iβm an anarchist. I hate governments and rules and fetters. Canβt stand caged animals. People must be free.
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