Squeeze human nature into the straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear.

The trouble with Germans is not that they fire shells, but that they engrave them with quotations from Kant.

The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back.

I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

Russia does not and cannot have any political choice but democracy. I want to say, and even stress, that we share those universal democratic principles taken around the whole world.

We are a country based on democracy, tolerance, and openness to the world.

Inflammatory passion and selfish interest characterizes most men, whereas ambition characterizes men who pursue and hold national office. Such men rise from the people through a process of self-selection, since politics is a dirty business that discourages all but the most ambitious.