Quotes by Mikhail Gorbachev

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

“I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos.”

“Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basi...”

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

“We could only solve our problems by cooperating with other countries. It would have been paradoxical not to cooperate. And therefore we needed to put an end to the Iron Curtain, to change the natur...”

“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.”

“I think we need more young people; we need to elect young people to government. We need to give them a chance, in the media, in politics, in democracy.”

“I paid too heavy a price for perestroika.”

“The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.”

“Democracy must learn to defend itself.”

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

“Ex-Presidents of the United States get state subsidies. Not so in Russia. You get no government support.”

“What we need is Star Peace and not Star Wars.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“Sometimes people ask me why I began perestroika. Were the causes basically domestic or foreign? The domestic reasons were undoubtedly the main ones, but the danger of nuclear war was so serious tha...”

“Never before has so terrible a threat loomed so large and dark over mankind as these days. The only reasonable way out of the existing situation is agreement of the confronting forces on an immedia...”

“Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.”