For the whole of Western Europe, I know the business community quite good.

I joined the city government, and we start to operate as the bureaucrats on the local level, so we were the only ones in the whole Russian team who were experienced in practical bureaucratic management in the complicated condition of 1990.

I'm communicating with the directors of the Soviet companies, and I see that it is wrong, but when I go to the official discussions, they discuss we should change the color of the walls.

During the election in 1989, there was the first Soviet election with alternative candidates to local government. I myself arranged special training for them.

Each university should have a Young Scholars' Committee. I became the chairman of this Committee, and immediately it was permitted to have this plan officially adopted.

These guys were the real owners of the country, and for them to discuss with this young guy who becomes a member of the government was absolutely unacceptable.

It was almost forbidden in the Soviet Union to study the New Economic Policy.

The red directors were one of the main political forces. Another force was the former Soviet ministers who lost everything because of the transformation of the Soviet Union to Russia.

There was the scientific and technical progress which couldn't be predicted by the state.

For the producers, there was no reason to produce. You get money, but you couldn't use this money. For consumers, you could have money, but you have no way to use it because you go to the shop and see nothing.

You're never able to please everybody, especially when you're transforming a country like Russia.

I am joining the government not from the academic position but from St. Petersburg city council.

The diversification of the people's demand could not be followed by the state apparatus.

There are no two countries with the same style of economic mechanism, with the same capitalism.

In 1995 the whole political situation was very complicated. I was the first deputy prime minister, and at the same time I had very low influence in the government.

For the whole of Western Europe, I know the business community quite good.

There was no doubt that sooner or later we will fight. But we will fight not in the way of the dissidents' protests. We understood that we needed to be as professional as possible.

Russia should support globalization. The Internet can develop in Russia in a very speedy way.

Bill Gates finds people in Russia to hire them to Microsoft. That's the Russian interest in this process.

I went to government for making these changes. I remember a number of guys among these important figures.

Private property is a very fundamental and very long-term institution.

The kind of capitalism I hate most is crony capitalism, the friends who decide. These are things which should be killed in Russia.

Killing the private property-that was the center of the Marxist economy and Marxist ideology. That was the center of the Lenin ideology.

There is a state that is able to understand the demand in the economy. That state should use prices as an instrument for implementation of this understanding.

I don't think Russia will follow the United States's way. I don't think Russia will follow the French way. I'm sure Russia will find its own way.

The Bolsheviks started not just on the killing of private property; they were trying to abolish money itself.

You need to find somebody who will speak the same language. We understand that we couldn't have any kind of discussion without permission, without a legal framework behind it.

The directors thought, They understand nothing in the real economy, in real life. They read some stupid books, and they came from the moon to the earth, and maybe in one month they will disappear.

If I just produce the transparent ideal accepted by the Western experts, a process of privatization which will be very good but never happen, that means nothing.

Money is the kind of instrument which is very speedily produced.

You're not always able to choose.

Natural resources are so vast that no single individual or business is going to protect them; they don't have an incentive to.

The bronze powder business, however, no longer required my personal attention, and was well managed by those I had chosen as the guardians of a secret, which was long and honourably kept.

I have done things politically, and I've been running a business at the same time, but I sort of joke that to some extent I do more than most legislators have done in their whole careers, and I've been doing it as a part-time job.

Howard Hughes himself was a regular at the restaurant, and in a way it became his headquarters, too. Howard had recently relocated to Las Vegas, so when he wanted to do business in Los Angeles, he went into the back of our restaurant to use the telephone.

Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

We mean by "politics" the people's business - the most important business there is.

Slovakia's joining the OECD in 1999 is totally dependent on meeting economic reforms required such as transparency and legislation that permits fair and open conduct of trade and business.

The way the business things work in Russia is you have to meet people, you have to go through a certain amount of etiquette and business things are done just simply by a shake of the hand and whether they like you or not.

I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

It costs a great deal of money to do a musical, and the more money involved, the more big business influences the artform.

It's a very hard and competitive business in which you have to fight every day in order to impose yourself.

I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.

Chicago kept industry, attracted new business, became the center for convention trade and transportation.

I have been, and will go on, fighting that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power at my command.

All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.

I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.

The surest way to return to the people's business is to listen to the people themselves: We need to drop this whole scheme of federally controlled health care, start over, and work together on real reforms at the state level that will contain costs and won't leave America trillions of dollars deeper in debt.