Americans have a severe disease - worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex.
Mikhail GorbachevRead
It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.
Interpretation
Engaging in open discussion is preferable to plotting harmful actions against each other.
This quote emphasizes the importance of dialogue and debate over scheming harmful intentions. Mikhail Gorbachev advocates for constructive communication as a means to resolve conflicts rather than resorting to destructive plots that could lead to mutual harm. This perspective highlights the belief that understanding different viewpoints can prevent catastrophic outcomes.
In practice
During a peace conference, one might quote this to encourage open dialogue.
Americans have a severe disease - worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex.
Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep.
The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.
To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.
New approaches are needed, new orientations in both thought and action. We must make the transition to a new civilization...We are talking of a transition toward a new civilization. No one knows what it will be like. What is important is to orient in that direction... I am convinced that a new civilization will inevitably take on certain features that are characteristic of, or inherent in, the socialist ideal.
According to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible.... The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy and revives the Leninist concept of socialist construction both in theory and in practice. We want more socialism and, therefore, more democracy.
When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of *Thus sayeth the Lord.*
there was no greater natural advantage in life than having an enemy overestimate your faults, unless it was to have a friend underestimate your virtues.
My experience of living with people of diverse religions and cultures taught me that one will never be at peace with the other if one is at war with oneself.
History, as the study of the past, makes the coherence of what happened comprehensible by reducing events to a dramatic pattern and seeming them in a simple form.
But all fairytales have rules, and perhaps itβs their rules that actually distinguish one fairytale from the other. These rules never need to be understood. They only need to be followed. If not, what they promise wonβt come true.
Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.
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