Dictators fall when they're overconfident; they stay in power when they're paranoid.

Autocratic power requires the degradation of moral authority - not the capture of moral high ground.

Of course, Oliver Stone is not Donald Trump. But he shares with him a certain way of seeing the world and being in the world - and the luxury of persisting in this way of being, and even making a spectacle of it.

I worked both as a Russian journalist and an American journalist and ran a bunch of magazines in Moscow over the course of about 20 years.

We learn to think of history as something that has already happened, to other people. Our own moment, filled as it is with minutiae destined to be forgotten, always looks smaller in comparison.

Resignation was the defining condition of Soviet life.

Trump very much wants to be liked by Putin and I think sincerely admires him. Putin doesn't know how to deal with somebody who positions himself like that.

Putin, I believe, was actually born to be a KGB agent. And I say born because I think that his father was also an agent of the secret police in Russia.

Trump, like Putin, has a demonstrably thin skin and short temper when it comes to being criticized by journalists.