Top 50 MIKHAIL GORBACHEV quotes and sayings

I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Being at one with nature.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

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.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Fall #Years #Gentleman

It seems that the most important thing about Reagan was his anti-Communism and his reputation as a hawk who saw the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire.'
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Evil #Important #Unions

If not me, who? And if not now, when?
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

When future generations judge those who came before them on environmental issues, they may conclude "they didn't know": let us not go down in history as the generations who knew, but didn't care
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Future #Issues #Judging

Water, like religion and ideology, has the power to move millions of people. Since the very birth of human civilization, people have moved to settle close to it. People move when there is too little of it. People move when there is too much of it. People journey down it. People write, sing and dance about it. People fight over it. And all people, everywhere and every day, need it.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Moving #Writing #Fighting

We need a new environmental consciousness on a global basis. To do this, we need to educate people.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#People #Environmental #Needs

I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Believe #Cosmos #I Believe

We need a new system of values, a system of the organic unity between humankind and nature and the ethic of global responsibility.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Inspiring #Responsibility #Unity

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

#Civilization #Invention #Century

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Life And Love #Accomplished

More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Mean #Everyday #Democracy

We desperately need to recognize that we are the guests not the masters of nature and adopt a new paradigm for development, based on the costs and benefits to all people, and bound by the limits of nature herself rather than the limits of technology and consumerism.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Technology #People #Cost

The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Unconditional Love #People #Democracy

The world will not accept dictatorship or domination
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#World #Accepting #Domination

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

#Diversity #People #Creative

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

#Air #Organization #Democracy

For the first time ever, we have confronted in reality the sinister power of uncontrolled nuclear energy.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Reality #Nuclear #Firsts

We are all passengers aboard one ship, the Earth, and we must not allow it to be wrecked. There will be no second Noah's Ark.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Earth #Ships #Ark

The time has come to choose a new direction of global development, to opt for a new civilization.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Communication #Civilization #Development

The time has come to develop integrated global policies.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Communication #Integrated #Policy

We are beginning to see practical support. And this is a very significant sign of the movement towards a new era, a new age.... We see both in our country and elsewhere... ghosts of the old thinking.... When we rid ourselves of their presence, we will be better able to move toward a new world order...relying on the relevent mechanisms of the United Nations.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Country #Money #Moving

In October 1917, we parted with the old world, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a new world, a world of Communism. We shall never turn off that road.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Moving #World #October

I am a Communist, a convinced Communist! For some that may be a fantasy. But to me it is my main goal.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Goal #May #Fantasy

Ideally, peace means the absence of violence. It is an ethical value.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Peace #Mean #Violence

Today, peace means the ascent from simple coexistence to cooperation and common creativity among countries and nations.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Country #Peace #Creativity

Women prevent the threads of life from being broken. The finest minds have always understood the peacemaking role of women.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Peace #Broken #Mind

The human race has entered a stage where we are all dependent on each other. No other country or nation should be regarded in total separation from another, let alone pitted against another.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Country #Freedom #Race

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.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Teacher #America #Democracy

What we need is Star Peace and not Star Wars.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Stars #War #Needs

It would be naive to think that the problems plaguing mankind today can be solved with means and methods which were applied or seemed to work in the past.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Work #Mean #Past

Globalization was supposed to break down barriers between continents and bring all peoples together. But what kind of globalization do we have with over one billion people on the planet not having safe water to drink?
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Water #People #Together

God has given us enough wisdom to make improvements in our relations.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Improvement #Enough #Given

We must treat water as if it were the most precious thing in the world, the most valuable natural resource. Be economical with water! Don't waste it! We still have time to do something about this problem before it is too late.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Water #World #Waste

The shortage of fresh water is the major ecological problem of this moment.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Water #Problem #Moments

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]
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Philosophy #Communication #Civilization

Those who are late will be punished by life itself.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Procrastination

To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Tree #Humanity #Sacred

I am an optimist and I believe that together we shall be able now to make the right historical choice so as not to miss the great chance at the turn of centuries and millenia and make the current extremely difficult transition to a peaceful world order.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Change #Believe #Order

In our discussions here at the forum there was no trace of the futile debate about what is better, capitalism or socialism...We should seek a synthesis of ideas and values that have proven their viability...
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Ideas #Government #Synthesis

You are fortunate to live here. If I were your President, I would levy a tax on you for living in San Francisco!
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#San Francisco #President #Taxes

If people don't like Marxism, they should blame the British Museum.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Museums #People #Blame

Our rockets can find Halley's comet, and fly to Venus with amazing accuracy, but side by side with these scientific and technical triumphs is an obvious lack of efficiency in using scientific achievements for economic needs... many Soviet household appliances are of poor quality.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#War #Achievement #Quality

It is better to see once than to hear a hundred times.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Leadership #Hundred

On the day I became Soviet leader, in March 1985, I had a special meeting with the leaders of the Warsaw Pact countries and told them: 'You are independent, and we are independent. You are responsible for your policies, we are responsible for ours. We will not intervene in your affairs, I promise you.'
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Country #Independent #Leader

Please remember one lesson of the 20th century. One cannot force happiness, impose happiness on nations by imposing any kind of utopia on others. The Communist model of society was a kind of imposed utopia for which the Russian people in particular paid a great price. Still, sometimes we see that attempts are being made to impose some other kind of model on the entire world - maybe a Westernized or Americanized model... This is not the way to go because this can only create conflict.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#People #World #Lessons

Montreal, this wonderful townâ€¦ Pearl of Canada, Pearl of the world.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Pearls #Canada #Towns

Dangers await only those who do not react to life.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Danger

For a new type of progress throughout the world to become a reality, everyone must change. Tolerance is the alpha and omega of a new world order.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Reality #Order #Tolerance

I began to feel the desire for something more; I wanted to do something to make things better.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Desire #Wanted #Feels

We were nearly one of the last to realize that in the age of information science the most expensive asset is knowledge.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Age #Information #Lasts

The emerging 'environmentalization' of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Civilization #Government #Community

The world's deteriorating ecology poses as great a danger to mankind today as did the nuclear standoff between the superpowers at the height of the Cold War.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#War #World #Height

Political leaders still think things can be done through force, but that cannot solve terrorism. Backwardness is the breeding ground of terror, and that is what we have to fight.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Fighting #Thinking #Leader

Sometimes its difficult to accept, to recognise ones own mistakes, but one must do it. I was guilty of overconfidence and arrogance, and I was punished for that.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Mistake #Arrogance #Sometimes

If the Russian word " perestroika " has easily entered the international lexicon, this is due to more than just interest in what is going on in the Soviet Union. Now the whole world needs restructuring, i.e. progressive development, a fundamental change.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Fundamentals #Development #World

Every US President has to have a war.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#War #America #President

The social model of the Bolsheviks failed, as will any model that denies individual rights, intellectual freedom, and freedom of competing political parties. Without these freedoms and rights, there is no motivation for people to work. Such a system cannot be sustained, especially in light of the technological revolution of the information era.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Motivation #War #Party

What we're talking about is creating new forms of life on the basis of new values.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Talking #Creating #World

Now that we are rid of this syndrome of imposing the communist model on people, now that we've given them the chance to get rid of this dogma, I have to tell you Americans that you've been pushing your American way of life for decades. You thought it was perfection itself, the ultimate achievement of human thought... There has to be a different approach... Americans have to be more modest in their desires. We have to stimulate human qualities in people rather than greed.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Perfection #People #Achievement

In effect, according to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible. By gaining democratic freedoms the working masses come to power.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Democracy #Socialism #Mass

Surely, God on high has not refused to give us enough wisdom to find ways to bring us an improvement in relations between the two great nations on earth.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Two #Giving #Earth

Democracy must learn to defend itself.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Democracy

Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Jesus #Political #Politics

Without glasnost there is not, and there cannot be, democratism, the political creativity of the masses and their participation in management.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Creativity #Political #Management

Without perestroika, the cold war simply would not have ended. But the world could not continue developing as it had, with the stark menace of nuclear war ever present.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#War #World #Nuclear

There is an increasing awareness of the need for some form of global government.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Law #Government #Needs

Every part of our program of perestroika - and the program as a whole, for that matter - is fully based on the principle of more socialism and more democracy.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Historical #Democracy #Matter

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.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Lying #Essence #Practice

The threat of environmental crisis is the 'international disaster key' to unlock the New World Order.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Order #Keys #Historical

Further global progress is now possible only through a quest for universal consensus in the movement towards a new world order.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Order #Historical #Progress

The new European Soviet.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Historical #Soviet

The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Doe #Ufo #Phenomenon

The threat of a world war is no more.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#War #World #Cold

We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren't enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Cutting #Ebola #People

I envisage the prinicles of the Earth Charter to be a new form of the ten commandments. They lay the foundation for a sustainable global earth community.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Community #Earth #Foundation

A New World Order is required to deal with the Climate Change crisis.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Order #World #Climate

You cannot go to sleep with one form of economic system and wake up the next morning with another.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Morning #Sleep #Wake Up

...the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant...has painfully affected the Soviet people, and shocked the international community. For the first time, we confront the real force of nuclear energy, out of control.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Real #People #Community

It will not be enough to rely on experts. Ordinary citizens must become experts too. It will take public opinion on a wide scale to ensure that world leaders act.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Communication #Leader #Experts

The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Determination #Europe #Leader

We had 10 years after the Cold War to build a new world order and yet we squandered them. The United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently. Every US president has to have a war.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#War #Order #Years

Americans have a severe disease â€” worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Disease #Winner #Aids

It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Hands #Weapons #Nuclear

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.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Thinking #America #Sick

There is only one superpower now and it doesn't know what to do with its status. As a result, we got Yugoslavia and Iraq, and the situation has only got worse.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Yugoslavia #Iraq #America

Sometimes when you stand face to face with someone, you cannot see his face
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Faces #Sometimes

We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Philosophy #Tradition #Conviction

I believe, as Lenin said, that this revolutionary chaos may yet crystallize into new forms of life
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Believe #May #Chaos

Life punishes those who come too late.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Too Late

The socialist tradition....goes back to Jesus Christ, not (Karl) Marx.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Jesus #Tradition #Christ

Communist ideology in its pure form is akin to Christianity. Its main ideas are the brotherhood of all peoples irrespective of their nationality, justice and equality, peace, and an end to all hostility between peoples.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Ideas #Justice #Brotherhood

Man is beginning to explore the galaxy. But how much remains undone on earth?
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Men #Earth #Undone

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.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Country #Army #Russia

The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism. ... If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Civilization #People #Dawn

Certain people in the United States are driving nails into this structure of our relationship, then cutting off the heads. So the Soviets must use their teeth to pull them out.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Cutting #People #United States

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.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

#Communication #Talking #Civilization

Mikhail Gorbachev famous quotes

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