"Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind."

Mikhail Gorbachev Politics See all quotes by Mikhail Gorbachev →

React to this quote

More by Mikhail Gorbachev

“Dangers await only those who do not react to life.”

“Perestroika did not give the people prosperity, something they expected of me, as head of state, based on an ingrained, traditional feeling of dependence. But I did not promise that. I urged people to use this new-found freedom to create prosperity, personal and social prosperity, with their own hands and minds, according to the abilities of each.”

“Gorbachev as McDermott Guest Lecturer at University of Dallas”

“Americans have a severe disease — worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex.”

“In the end, the “model” that came into existence in the USSR was not socialist but totalitarian. This is a serious matter to be reflected on by all who seriously aspire to progress for the benefit of the human race.”

“If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven't done much today.”

Resonant Thoughts

"I think that the audience for poetry has widened in recent years and maybe it's continuing to widen—I hope so. The whole poetry slam phenomenon has created an interest and widened the audience for poe…"

— Nathaniel Mackey

Literature1947

#life

"All this twaddle, the existence of God, atheism, determinism, liberation, societies, death, etc., are pieces of a chess game called language, and they are amusing only if one does not preoccupy onesel…"

— Marcel Duchamp

Art1887–1968

#life

"As I write, it is not yet clear who has won the presidential election. Win or lose, though, Mr Obama was not and is not the president. The Hawaiian long-form "birth certificate" he publicly endorsed a…"

— Christopher Monckton

Politics1952

#life