Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes

Enjoy the top 172 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Mikhail Gorbachev.

“If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you havent done much today.”
— Mikhail Gorbachev —

“If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven't done much today.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“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

“Life is much richer and more complex than even the most perfect plans to make it better. It ultimately takes vengeance for attempts to impose abstract schemes, even with the best of intentions. Perestroika has made us understand this about our past, and the actual experience of recent years has taught us to reckon with the most general laws of civilization.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“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

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

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“A period of transition to a new quality in all spheres of society's life is accompanied by painful phenomena. When we were initiating perestroika we failed to properly assess and foresee everything. Our society turned out to be hard to move off the ground, not ready for major changes which affect people's vital interests and make them leave behind everything to which they had become accustomed over many years. In the beginning we imprudently generated great expectations, without taking into account the fact that it takes time for people to realize that all have to live and work differently, to stop expecting that new life would be given from above.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“A society should never become like a pond with stagnant water, without movement. That's the most important thing.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

If not me, who? And if not now, when?

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“Sometimes it's difficult to accept, to recognise one's own mistakes, but one must do it. I was guilty of overconfidence and arrogance, and I was punished for that.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

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

“It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“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

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

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“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

“Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“Sometimes when you stand face to face with someone, you cannot see his face.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

There should be competition and exchanges between different countries, but there are certainly certain universal values, and that is freedom and democracy.

— Mikhail Gorbachev

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

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“I don't think Russia is setting this as a goal; I don't think this should be Russia's goal. I think even the United States doesn't need to be a superpower. China doesn't need to be a superpower. It's a different world.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

You cannot put Russia down on its knees and hold it there because Russia will ultimately pull out.

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“The EU is the old Soviet Union dressed in Western clothes”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“The time has come to choose a new direction of global development, to opt for a new civilization.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“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

“The threat of environmental crisis is the 'international disaster key' to unlock the New World Order.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“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

“To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“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

“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

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

“We have no right ever to forget that psychological warfare
is a struggle for winning people's minds.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“History is a capricious creature. It depends on who writes it.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

Nature is reminding us that it used to exist without human beings.

— Mikhail Gorbachev

The guilt of Stalin and his immediate entourage before the Party and the people for the mass repressions and lawlessness they committed is enormous and unforgivable.

— Mikhail Gorbachev

A new world order is taking shape so fast that governments as well as private citizens find it difficult just to absorb the gallop of events.

— Mikhail Gorbachev

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

— Mikhail Gorbachev

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

“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

It is really important to solve the problem of rational utilization and distribution of wate supplies. I dare say, the shortage of fresh water is the major ecological problem of this moment.

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“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

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

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“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

“Contemporary social democracy is what I believe is the right concept.”

— Mikhail Gorbachev

“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

“Women prevent the threads of life from being broken. The finest minds have always understood the peacemaking role of women.”