Quotes from Fareed Zakaria

Democracy is also a single ideology, and, like all such templates, it has its limits. what works in a legislature might not work in a corporation

In fact, some have said that the clash between Catholicism and Protestantism illustrates the old maxim that religious freedom is the product of two equally pernicious fanaticisms, each cancelling the other out

Russia's fundamental problem is not that it is a poor country struggling to modernize, but rather that it is a rich country struggling to modernize. Schoolchildren in the Soviet era were taught that they lived in the richest country in the world. In this case communist propaganda was true

Religions are vague, of course. This means that they are easy to follow -you can interpret their prescriptions as you like. but it also means that it is easy to slip up -there is always some injunction you are violating. But Islam has no religious establishment - no popes, no bishops - that can declare by fiat which is the correct interpretation. As a result, the decision to oppose the state on the grounds that is insufficiently Islamic belongs to anyone who wishes to exercise it.

In an almost unthinkable reversal of a global pattern, almost every Arab country today is less free than it was forty years ago. There are few places in the world about which one can say that.

For years many in the oil-rich states argued that their enormous wealth would bring modernizations. They pointed to the impressive appetites of Saudis and Kuwaitis for things Western, from McDonald's hamburgers to Rolex watches to Cadillac limousines. but importing Western good is easy; importing the inner stuffing of modern society - a free market, political parties, accountability, the rule of law - is difficult and even dangerous for the ruling elites

Outbreaks are inevitable but pandemics are optional," says Larry Brilliant

It was not the Great Depression that brought the Nazis to power in Germany but rather hyperinflation, which destroyed the middle class by making its savings worthless.

in 2010, foreign students received more than 50 percent of all Ph.D.'s awarded in every subject in the United States. In the sciences, that figure is closer to 75 percent. Half of all Silicon Valley start-ups have one founder who is an immigrant or first-generation American. America's potential new burst of productivity, its edge in nanotechnology, biotechnology, its ability to invent the future—all rest on its immigration policies.

Politically Incorrect was the name of the show Bill Maher hosted in the 1990s. It's also an apt description of the man himself. Now host of -- HBO's hit show Real Time, I find Maher to be one of the sharpest observers of American politics and life in general out there. It doesn't mean I always agree with him. I always find him funny, though.

The Romans saw loss of virtue all around them. The Victorians decried the decline in religiosity in the next generation.

The crucial challenge is to learn how to read critically, analyze data, and formulate ideas—and

After centuries of bemoaning the fact that the young are too rebellious and disrespectful, the problem today, it appears, is that they are not rebellious and disrespectful enough. They aren't willing to challenge conventional wisdom, neither the liberal pieties that offended Allan Bloom nor the conservative ones that gall Deresiewicz. After having been pilloried for trying to destroy the bourgeois order in the 1960s and 1970s, the youth are now scorned for being too bourgeois.

Glimpses of World History

America has become what Francis Fukuyama calls a "vetocracy." The system of checks and balances, replicated at every level of government, ensures that someone, somewhere can always block any positive action. The United States has become a nation of naysayers.

Eisenhower spoke in language that few left-wing peaceniks would dare to employ today. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed

wisest leaders try to understand history, evaluate the larger forces at work, and determine how much room there is for human action.

Mortality rates in the United States fell by 40% from 1900 to 1940 and life expectancy rose from forty-seven to sixty-three, note researchers David M. Cutler and Grant Miller.

Urban areas take up less than 3% of the earth's surface while housing a majority of its inhabitants.

In Bangladesh, there are fewer than eight hospital beds for every 10,000 people, a quarter the capacity in the United States and an eighth the capacity in the European Union.

Victoria Principal—she

America's problems—from ineffective government to patchy health care to vicious polarization.

Newborns in Chicago's majority-White, upscale Streeterville neighborhood can expect, on average, to live to be ninety years old. That is three decades more than those born in Englewood, a predominantly African American neighborhood to the south.

Capital is a coward