And what I've learned isnot to believe in magical leaders any more; that character and compassion are more important than ideology; and that even if it's absurd to think you can change things, it's even more absurd to think that it's foolish and unimportant to try.

-Newman, Peter C
  Home Country: People, Places, and Power Politics.

   We dislike the IRA, most of us, and fear it.We are a peaceful and democratic people.But our history, our idealistic pretensions and our fatal ambivalence have stuck us with an ideology that is warlike and anti- democratic, and calls increasingly for further human sacrifice.

-Oates,Joyce Carol
  In the NewYork Review of Books, 29  Apr.

The West has not lived through totalitarianism, with a single ideology for 70 years.We are escaping from the burden of the past, and onlyafter we have done that will we be ready to integrate with Europeöand Europe needs Russia.

-Yeltsin, Boris
  Addressing socialist MPs in Strasbourg,15 Apr.