29+ Mikhail Khodorkovsky Quotes On War, Democracy And Education

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a Russian businessman and former oligarch who made his fortune in the 1990s during the privatization of state-owned assets in Russia. He was arrested in 2003 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for fraud and tax evasion. After his release in 2013, he became an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a major supporter of opposition candidates in the 2018 Russian presidential election. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Mikhail Khodorkovsky on war, democracy, education.

Top 10 Mikhail Khodorkovsky Quotes

1. Today, a skilled manager makes more than the owner. And owners fight each other to get the skilled managers.
2. I like everything to be dependable, heavy, English furniture.
3. I have to travel a lot, but relaxation to me is when I am at home.
4. I have always defended my convictions and what I believed to be the truth.
5. I knew President Yeltsin well. He would never have tolerated government officials demonstratively showing off the millions they acquired through corruption, the way it's done today.
6. What's important to me now is to uphold my good name and achieve a fair court decision - the past cannot be recovered anyway.
7. My parents were Muscovites. They worked at the Kaliber factory.
8. I'm not an ordinary prisoner.
9. To admit guilt for nonexistent crimes is unacceptable to me.
10. A left turn in the fate of Russia is as necessary as it is inevitable.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky Quotes About Personally

The right to private property meant at the same time the right and duty to be personally concerned about your own well-being, to be personally concerned about your family's income, to be personally concerned about your future. This is hard work. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Putin regards me as the most dangerous person, and when they were releasing me from jail, the only condition was that I leave the country. And when they did push me out of the country, to make sure that I wouldn't come back, they opened up a criminal case against me - a new one. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Fortunes are made, and disappear, over the lifetime of a single generation. Today, a person in essence takes his wealth from society just for the duration of his or her lifetime. The next generation has to create it anew. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Mikhail Khodorkovsky Famous Quotes And Sayings

Putin doesn't need Donbass (east Ukraine). He wants to determine the fate of the world at talks with a U.S. President, putin is dreaming of getting a deal with the United States about a new-old order for the world, when the world is split on zone of influence. When you cannot interfere in someone else's zone. Not even to mention internal politics. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

And so, now things that are important are, for example, the upcoming elections. It's important that society demonstrate that it is not pretending that these elections are elections. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Opposition work is not without its dangers. But if you've chosen a job like that for yourself, you then subsequently shouldn't spend your time every second thinking, oh my God, what might happen to me? Oh my God, what might happen to me? Your colleagues include quite a large number of war correspondents. Their job is not the least dangerous in the world, either. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

This demonstration of power, indifferent to the law, is highly dangerous. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

If we talk about changes of power in Russia, that has occurred several times in the past century. After Stalin came Khrushchev, who implemented his legacy quite radically, one could say. But there was no blood, nonetheless. After Brezhnev came Gorbachev. I'm not talking about the ones who were in power for only a short period of time. Gorbachev, too, left a very radical legacy. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Russia on its path has oftentimes discussed and overdiscussed what had happened earlier, instead of moving forward. The result is always the same: It is very difficult to move forward when you're looking backward. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Putin has an obvious problem. His country's economy is in stagnation. He needs to constantly be pointing a figure at who is at fault. America is at fault. He needs to show those fronts - those directions in which he is defeating America. In Syria, for example, in Syria, he is defeating America; not ISIS, he's defeating America. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

By equating Putin and Russia, you are creating a situation that's the opposite of what you would like to have happen. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

People take the lazy way out, and do not regard Putin and the Kremlin as the real enemy. They create a long but erroneous chain in their heads. Putin is the leader of Russia. Putin does X, therefore Russia is doing X, and Russia is our enemy. And so, we introduce sanctions, for example, against Russia. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

I established my bank in 1988. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

The structure of the company is constantly changing. The composition of the necessary working groups is constantly changing. We have many divisions that are based on the project principle, which means that they are put together for each project. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Every politician deep inside is authoritarian. If the person doesn't have ambition, that's not a politician. Society needs to put every ambitious, every effective politician into such a position that it helps - that this person helps improve society. That's why I'm always talking about need to change the system rather than should we go with Navalny or Gudkov or Yavlinsky or Khodorkovsky. We all have our ambitions. We're all ambitious people. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Russian people really don't like it when somebody does horrible things in Russia, and then can calmly go travel to another country and spend time there. And this is what needs to be done: the Russian people need to be told this, because in today's world, just doing something is not enough. You've got to tell about it, too. If you've done something and haven't told about it, it's as good as if you hadn't done it at all. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Part of the people here are interested in the same thing that Putin is interested in: Putin wants to have America as an enemy. Part of Americans want to have Russia as an enemy. It's advantageous. The other part of the people are just ordinary people. And these people project onto big objects the kind of relations that they have with small objects in their everyday lives. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

People expect some kinds of decisions from Putin that will help them see their own future. A significant part of the people that he relies on are quite content with him telling them that nothing is going to change. But that part of the elite that does want to see some changes and improvements are going to expect him to, in his next term, bring Russia back into the club of the great powers. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

I am working in my office. I've got a boss who tells me what to do. He's got a boss who tells him what to do. And above him is another boss who probably is telling my boss in the same way - or my boss' boss in the same way what to do. In actuality, this is not the way things work. Management science says that that kind of a chain doesn't work more than three levels up. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Life Lessons by Mikhail Khodorkovsky

1. Mikhail Khodorkovsky's life is a testament to the importance of hard work and perseverance in the face of adversity.
2. He serves as an example of how to use business acumen to build a successful career and create wealth.
3. His story also demonstrates the power of standing up for what you believe in, even in the face of opposition.