Quotes on Global Issues

[W]hat suffers in the atmosphere of immediacy is analysis. What suffers in this search for speed is depth. The media in the wealthy world are becoming increasingly simplistic, superficial, and celebrity-focused.

I am for peace. And I am for a negotiated peace. But this accord is not a just peace.

I dread our own power, and our own ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded... We may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing, and hitherto unheard-of-power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but that, sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin.

Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups.

A fertilizer bomb that kills hundreds in Oklahoma. Fuel-laden civil jets that kill 4000 in New York. A sanctions policy that kills one and a half million in Iraq. A trade policy that immiserates continents. You can make a bomb out of anything. The ones on paper hurt the most.

That wild beast which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free.

There is a common tendency to ignore the poor or to develop some rationalisation for the good fortune of the fortunate.