Boris Yeltsin Quotes

One could see that what you are writing was that today's meeting with President Bill Clinton was going to be a disaster. Now, for the first time, I can tell you that you are a disaster.

Then some sort of election race is being created. The elections are not until the year 2000, but already now such a situation is being created that everybody seems to be striving for elections. Of course, such a situation cannot be tolerated any more. Here, on the contrary, there must be a united team. The team must be close-knit and work as a single fist.

Liberty sets the mind free, fosters independence and unorthodox thinking and ideas. But it does not offer instant prosperity or happiness and wealth to everyone. This is something that politicians in particular must keep in mind.

We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. Freedom is like that. It's like air. When you have it, you don't notice it.

You can build a throne with bayonets, but it's difficult to sit on it.

Perhaps, for the first time ever there is now a real chance to put an end to despotism and to dismantle the totalitarian order, whatever shape it may take. I trust that after all the unthinkable tragedies and tremendous losses that it has suffered, mankind will reject this legacy. It will not allow the 21st century to bring new suffering and deprivations to our children and grandchildren.

I cannot shift the blame for Chechnya, for the sorrow of numerous mothers and fathers. I made the decision, therefore I am responsible.

I told NATO, the Americans, the Germans, don't push us towards military action. Otherwise there will be a European war for sure and possibly world war.

History demonstrates that it is a dangerous delusion to suppose that the destinies of continents and of the world community in general can somehow be managed from one single capital

Your commanders have ordered you to storm the White House and to arrest me. But I as the elected President of Russia give you the order to turn your tanks and not to fight against your own people.

A man must live like a great brilliant flame and burn as brightly as he can. In the end he burns out. But this is far better than a mean little flame.

What have they done to our poor people?... [the] pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments... I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans.

Great harm to the country is done by the passing of laws that cannot be implemented. No allocations for them are envisaged in the budget. The deputies are aware of this, but still insist on passing laws that require tens of trillions of roubles to implement. It is strange that the authoritative and experienced regional leaders -- members of the Federation Council.

But I don’t believe in a civil war. No matter how agitated the atmosphere gets and no matter how hard the president and his advisers try to aggravate the situation, I am absolutely confident of the people’s common sense.

Quite recently I spoke to very different audiences in Yaroslavl, Kaliningrad, and Novgorod provinces. And although I met with workers, intellectuals, peasants, military men, party employees, and managerial employees, people with diverse political views, sympathies, and passions, it will be a long time before I will be able to recall such unanimity on the most important point, that is, the understanding that the country has reached the very final stage of collapse and that there is no longer anywhere to fall back to. The people who led one of the wealthiest and most talented countries on the planet to a state of destitution and degradation must always have a face of the “enemy” to fall back on, someone they can blame for everything that is going on. We have always had an “enemy” in the seventy-three years of Soviet power: at first we had the bourgeoisie, the gentry, and the capitalists; then we had the counterrevolutionaries, the Trotskyites, and the left- and right-wing deviationists, and also the kulaks; then came the CIA, imperialism, and the Zionist conspiracy. And now we need a new “enemy,” because no one believes in the CIA, the Trotskyites, or the capitalists anymore. The new “enemy” is the so-called democrats, who are destabilizing, tormenting, subverting, disorienting, and committing all other kinds of vile acts in their lust for power. On the basis of this logic, all we would have to do to make everything good in the country would be to remove the democrats and get rid of them somehow, and then there would ensue a glorious time known as the “Communist future,” “the socialist choice,” or the “radiant future.”