Mikhail Gorbachev Quotations | Page 2

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

History punishes those that come late to it.

Humankind has no option but to protect and live in harmony with its natural environment. However, it would be regrettable if in putting an end to revolutionary extremism, we should then come to environmental extremism. We should not forget that all extremes are the same.

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.

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

Though representatives of many ethnic groups came together in the United States, English became their common language. Apparently, this was a natural choice. One can imagine what would have happened if members of each nation moving to the U.S. had spoken only their own tongues and refused to learn English.

No one, no single center, can today command the world. No single group of countries can do it. Under the current U.S. president, I don't think we can fundamentally change the situation as it is developing now. It is dangerous. The world is experiencing a period of growing global disarray.

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.

America has a right to be a leader. This leadership should be realized through partnership, not domination.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Life punishes those who come too late.

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

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.

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

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.

...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.

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

Those who are late will be punished by life itself.

The time has come to develop integrated global policies.

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.

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.

Americans have a severe disease — worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

It's America calling the shots in everything

Montreal, this wonderful town… Pearl of Canada, Pearl of the world.

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.

Dangers await only those who do not react to life.

Democracy must learn to defend itself.

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

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

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

It will be difficult, even painful, but democracy will prevail in Russia. There will be no dictatorship, although relapses into authoritarianism are possible.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

The threat of a world war is no more.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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]

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

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.

Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.

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.

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.

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.

The EU is the old Soviet Union dressed in Western clothes

a great deal is still to be done before stability develops into national accord.