Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes

50 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Mikhail Gorbachev
The idea of restructuring [perestroika]…combines continuity and innovation, the historical experience of Bolshevism and the contemporaneity of socialism.

Mikhail Gorbachev
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
I view the award of the Nobel Prize to me as an expression of understanding of my intentions, my aspirations, the objectives of the profound transformation we have begun in our country, and the ideas of new thinking. I see it as your acknowledgment of my commitment to peaceful means of implementing the objectives of perestroika.

Mikhail Gorbachev
After a time of rampant separatism and euphoria, when almost every village proclaimed sovereignty, a centripetal force is beginning to gather momentum, based on a more sensible view of existing realities and the risks involved. And this is what counts most now. There is a growing will to achieve consensus, and a growing understanding that we have a State, a country, a common life. This is what must be preserved first of all.

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

Mikhail Gorbachev
I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. Look at the sun. If there is no sun, then we cannot exist. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.

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

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

Mikhail Gorbachev
It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction

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

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

Mikhail Gorbachev
After leaving the Kremlin…my conscience was clear. The promise I gave to the people when I started the process of perestroika was kept: I gave them freedom.

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

Mikhail Gorbachev
I have long ago made a final and irrevocable decision. Nothing and no one, no pressure, cither from the right or from the left, will make me abandon the positions of perestroika and new thinking. I do not intend to change my views or convictions. My choice is a final one.
It is my profound conviction that the problems arising in the course of our transformations can be solved solely by constitutional means. That is why I make every effort to keep this process within the confines of democracy and reforms.

Mikhail Gorbachev
To me, it is self-evident that if Soviet perestroika succeeds, there will be a real chance of building a new world order. And if perestroika fails, the prospect of entering a new peaceful period in history will vanish, at least for the foreseeable future.
I believe that the movement that we have launched towards that goal has fairly good prospects of success. After all, mankind has already benefited greatly in recent years, and this has created a certain positive momentum.

Mikhail Gorbachev
The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy... We want more socialism and, therefore, more democracy.

Mikhail Gorbachev
Preparing for my address I found in an old Russian encyclopedia a definition of "peace" as a "commune" — the traditional cell of Russian peasant life. I saw in that definition the people's profound understanding of peace as harmony, concord, mutual help, and cooperation.
This understanding is embodied in the canons of world religions and in the works of philosophers from antiquity to our time.

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
We desperately need to recognise 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
Americans have a severe disease — worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex.

Mikhail Gorbachev