Latest Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I support freedom and I support a free market economy, but it should be a socially oriented market economy. I support globalization, but it should be globalization with a human face.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Support, Faces, Globalization

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• Contemporary social democracy is what I believe is the right concept.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Believe, Democracy, Social

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• We used to have just one criterion and that was profit, and then another criterion was added - social welfare. Now we have to add the third important criterion, and that is nature and the environment.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Important, Add, Environment

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• I'm still committed to the socialist idea because the socialist idea, correctly understood, includes the principles of freedom and social justice. It also includes the recognition of the value of democracy. When we speak about social justice, it means that freedom should be used not only in the interest of profit but also in the interest of the advancement of the people who create all values.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Mean, Ideas, Justice

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• The forests of Russia and Brazil are the lungs of the Earth.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Russia, Brazil, Earth

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• Lake Baikal in Russia has 25 percent of the freshwater resources of the world. Sixty-five percent of the Russian ecosystems are in danger. So let's preserve what we have, and let's take good care of nature.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Ecosystems, Lakes, Russia

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• Many people who live in big countries like ours thought that we had resources that would work for us for many, many years, but that was a mistake. Our natural wealth corrupted us. In this country, you were among the first to raise environmental issues. In Russia, despite all of its problems today, people are concerned about the environment, and it's become a central issue on the agenda.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Country, Mistake, Years

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• I remember Secretary of State [George] Shultz one day saying that America is an economic model for the world. I replied to him that America represents 5 percent of the world's population and consumes 30 percent of the world's energy. What if everyone in the world lives like Americans? Where do we get the energy for this standard of living?

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Economic Models, America, What If

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• The problem the world faces today is that only one-third of the world's population lives in decent circumstances, while half the population of the world lives on one or two dollars a day. And even as we have this poverty and backwardness, we are facing a global environmental crisis. We need developmental models that will take into account the specific and unique position of each country and at the same time will address the environmental crisis.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Country, Unique, Two

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• One of the reasons why this country undertook military action in Iraq was that there are quite a few problems here, and perhaps attention needed to be deflected from those problems. It sometimes seems that the U.S. economy works successfully only if it gets a stimulus from the defense industry. So perhaps in addition to showing the power and the might of the United States internationally, another reason was to help the defense industry and to help the U.S. economy recover.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Country, Military, Iraq

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• The model of the consumer society is something that will one day end. My personal view is that too much consumption is wrong.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Views, One Day, Too Much

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• If you want Russia to be a real fully developed partner, then America should invest in Russia and activate Russia as a strong nation.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Strong, Real, America

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• Some think that Russia should become a kind of a U.S. province, where it should supply natural resources to the United States and the rest of the world. But these people ignore one very important thing: The Russian people will never agree to this scenario. Russia is ultimately a self-sufficient country.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Country, Thinking, Self

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• It sometimes seems to me that some of our Western partners do not want Russia to fully recover. They would like Russia to be in a subdued state, and they want Russian resources to be used for the benefit of the U.S. economy.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Russia, Benefits, Want

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• The United States found dozens of billions of dollars for military action in Iraq, so it should certainly be able to find a few billions of dollars to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. I'll assume that since the most powerful nation - the United States - has promised to pay for much of this, then its word will be kept. If it isn't, I don't think we can have a true partnership.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Powerful, Military, Thinking

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• A new generation of more educated people started to be active. Then society required freedom, society demanded freedom.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  People, Generations, Educated

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• Sometimes, the decisions have to be taken in minutes, even seconds, and there would be no time to make the right decision. We understood that this could have ended in catastrophe.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Taken, Decision, Would Be

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• I certainly wouldn't say that we loved the arms race. Trillions of dollars were used to stoke it. For our economy, which was smaller in size than the American economy, it was a burden. But one cannot agree with the statement that the arms race played the key role in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Keys, Race, Dollars

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• We could still have continued the arms race, but the arms race was pointless, and it was another reason we decided to start perestroika. It was senseless to continue to accumulate weapons. We had enough weapons to destroy life on Earth 1,000 times, and therefore it was very clear to us that the arms race could spiral out of control. A conflict could have started, as both the Americans and the Soviets realized, not out of a wrong political decision but because of a failure in the command-and-control systems.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Race, Command And Control, Decision

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• Not only America but all countries should think together about how the enormous might of the sole remaining superpower should be used. We need a leadership that is based on partnership, a leadership that unites nations and makes it possible to solve the problems of the globe together. Otherwise, we will have another Gold Rush for a superpower that wants to gain even greater advantages, that wants to gain an absolutely new position for itself. That would lead to a perverse utopia.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Country, Thinking, America

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• What happened to the Soviet Union happened mainly for domestic reasons. It was a failure of the model based on a command economy and dictatorship. The rejection of freedom and democracy, the decisionmaking monopoly of one party, and the monopoly of one ideology all had a chilling effect on the country. That model turned out to be incapable of making structural changes. It did not open up ways for initiative and was overly centralized.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Country, Party, Rejection

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

• When I cleared out Moscow apartment after stepping down as president, they found all kinds of wiring in the walls. It turned out that they had been spying on me all along.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Wall, President, Moscow

• Politics is my second love, next to my love for Raisa [Gorbacheva].

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Next

• I will never give up politics. I've tried to give it up three times, but I never made it. Politics mobilizes me. I won't last long if I give it up.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Giving Up, Long, Lasts

  "'They Were Truly Idiots'". Interview with Matthias Schepp and Christian Neef, www.spiegel.de. August 16, 2011.

• The Union was destroyed against the will of the people, and it was done deliberately - with the participation of the Russian leadership, on the one hand, and that of the putschists, on the other.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Hands, People, Done

  "'They Were Truly Idiots'". Interview with Matthias Schepp and Christian Neef, www.spiegel.de. August 16, 2011.