Quotes from Mikhail Gorbachev

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

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 that it was a no less significant factor.

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

Life punishes those who come too late.

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

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

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.

I grew up in a family of peasants, and it was there that I saw the way that, for example, our wheat fields suffered as a result of dust storms, water erosion and wind erosion; I saw the effect of that on life - on human life.

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

If current technological processes continue without change, the environment will change, and we, the human species, will either have to mutate or even die, to disappear, as many species have disappeared.

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

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

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

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 basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government.

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.

Sometimes, the decisions have to be taken in minutes, even seconds, and there would be no time to make the right decision. We understood that this could have ended in catastrophe.

The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.

The time has come to develop integrated global policies.

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

I paid too heavy a price for perestroika.

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.

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 nature of international relations, to rid them of ideological confrontation, and particularly to end the arms race.

I couldn't wait to get to the most powerful position, because I thought then I would be able to fix problems that only the leader can fix. But when I got there, I realized we needed revolutionary change.

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