Michail Sergejevič Gorbačov citáty

Kdo přijde pozdě, toho život potrestá.

Zdroj: [Novinky.cz, Mé tažení proti alkoholu byla chyba, přiznal Gorbačov, http://www.novinky.cz/zahranicni/evropa/369613-me-tazeni-proti-alkoholu-byla-chyba-priznal-gorbacov.html, 2015-05-15, 2015-06-24]

"Nature Is My God" - interview with Fred Matser in Resurgence No. 184 (September-October 1997) http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/184/gorbachev.htm
Kontext: We have retreated from the perennial values. I don't think that we need any new values. The most important thing is to try to revive the universally known values from which we have retreated.
As a young man, I really took to heart the Communist ideals. A young soul certainly cannot reject things like justice and equality. These were the goals proclaimed by the Communists. But in reality that terrible Communist experiment brought about repression of human dignity. Violence was used in order to impose that model on society. In the name of Communism we abandoned basic human values. So when I came to power in Russia I started to restore those values; values of "openness" and freedom.

Nobel Address (1991)
Kontext: During the last six years we have discarded and destroyed much that stood in the way of a renewal and transformation of our society. But when society was given freedom it could not recognize itself, for it had lived too long, as it were, "beyond the looking glass". Contradictions and vices rose to the surface, and even blood has been shed, although we have been able to avoid a bloodbath. The logic of reform has clashed with the logic of rejection, and with the logic of impatience which breeds intolerance.