I made mistakes. My supporters and I failed to prevent a main like [Mikhail] Saakashvili from acquiring absolute power. I should have criticized him earlier on.

The West didn't see our real situation, and we were blinded by the compliments coming from the Europeans and Americans.

We lived in a totalitarian system for more than 70 years, and our views are still under its influence. Many heads of state in the former Soviet republics believe that they must have total power.

Our prison in Georgia is a very different place from this prison here in Berlin. The conditions there are inhuman.

I think that our society will not allow anyone to establish a dictatorship again in the future. [Mikhail] Saakashvili will fail.

I hope to be granted asylum. Deportation [ from Germany] that would be a death sentence for me.

Georgian society can no longer be divided. I don't want to see our country's best minds leaving the country to try their luck abroad.

So many of the world's problems, he mused, were solved by sheer human decency.

The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society.

Launch and learn. Everything is progress.

The authentic is almost never found by being pursued; but there is no missing it when you are in its presence.

Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.

Women are most adorable when they are afraid; that's why they frighten so easily.

I have often said that it doesn't matter to me if a student tells me he is a leader of the left, unless he is a good student. We need good students.

What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.

That's the curse of the reading class. We can be seduced by a good story even at the most inopportune moments.

When I am in London, I think my favourite city is London, but when I am in New York, I feel it is New York. It is very hard to choose between the two.