The Soviet Union could not exist without the image of the empire. The image of the empire could not exist without the image of force. The USSR ended the moment the first hammer pounded the Berlin Wall.

Money, big money (which is actually a relative concept) is always, under any circumstances, a seduction, a test of morals, a temptation to sin.

A politician must have some scruples, a certain decency; he cannot smear himself in the mud for the sake of a high ideal.

There are numerous bugbears in the profession of politician. First, ordinary everyday life suffers. Second, there are many temptations to ruin you and those around you. And I suppose, third, and this is rarely discussed, people at the top generally have no friends.

The main problem with being president is the constant sense that you are inside a glass bowl for everyone to see, or in a kind of barometric chamber with an artificial atmosphere where you must stay all the time.

Not a single reform effort in Russia has ever been completed.

We Russians are already living, not getting ready to live.