He who is late will be punished by history.
Кто опоздает, того накажет история.
Politicians
Mikhail Gorbachev
Last leader of the Soviet Union (1931-2022). Elected General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 at age 54, he launched perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness), negotiated the INF Treaty with Ronald Reagan, allowed Eastern Europe to fall in 1989, and accepted German reunification. He won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize but presided over the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 against his own wishes - a hero in the West, a controversial figure in Russia.
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Mikhail Gorbachev's Other Quotes
We cannot live in the old way, and I propose to carry out a radical restructuring of all sides of our society's life.
Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
We are now living in a new world. An end has been put to the Cold War and the arms race, as well as to the mad militarisation of our country, which crippled our economy.
Related Quotes
We cannot live in the old way, and I propose to carry out a radical restructuring of all sides of our society's life.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev
Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.
-- Ronald Reagan
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
-- John F. Kennedy