One of the most influential political leaders of our time, Mikhail Gorbachev is widely admired for ending the Cold War through the unification of Germany and the reforms he instituted in the Soviet Union.
He changed the map of Europe, freeing hundreds of millions of people from Hungary to Poland to Soviet States themselves, and altered the geopolitical landscape of the world, inspiring world powers to abandon the dangerous brinkmanship of the nuclear arms race for a new era of international cooperation and understanding.
Gorbachev initiated sweeping internal reforms in the Soviet Union which led to greater expression of political and cultural ideas and a renewed sense of progress and industry. This plan of new economic, social, political and spiritual growth was known as ‘perestroika’.
(1931 – )
– Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes –
We need a new system of values, a system of the organic unity between humankind and nature and the ethic of global responsibility.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
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.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
A period of transition to a new quality in all spheres of society’s life is accompanied by painful phenomena.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
Democracy must learn to defend itself.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
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.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
I believe, as Lenin said, that this revolutionary chaos may yet crystallize into new forms of life.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
What we need is Star Peace and not Star Wars.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven’t done much today.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.
~ 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
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
Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
Dangers await only those who do not react to life.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
Our rockets can find Halley’s comet, and fly to Venus with amazing accuracy, but side by side with these scientific and technical triumphs is an obvious lack of efficiency in using scientific achievements for economic needs, and many Soviet household appliances are of poor quality.
~ 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
We had 10 years after the Cold War to build a new world order and yet we squandered them.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
Today, peace means the ascent from simple coexistence to cooperation and common creativity among countries and nations.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
The more I reflect on the current world developments, the more I become convinced that the world needs perestroika no less than the Soviet Union needs it.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
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.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev
