Quotes from Fareed Zakaria

Fear is a great divider—and fears of disease in particular have divided the world in the past. In the nineteenth century, when the bubonic plague had long disappeared from Europe but lingered in some parts of Asia, it reinforced the divide between the industrial and nonindustrial world, between colonizers and colonized.

never really experiencing the true costs of its mistakes—until now. America is successful enough never to collapse, but it could slowly edge downward

America needs to learn from the world. And what it most needs to learn about is government—not big or small but good government.

Just 10% of China's population attended some college and yet virtually every member of the Communist Party's Central Committee has—99% as of 2016. Ironically, this makes the Chinese Communist Party in some ways the world's most elitist organization.)

The new metric worldwide would raise the figure for other nations as well, but the contribution of education, R&D, and consumer durables to total savings "is higher in the United States than in most other countries, except perhaps for a few Nordic countries."*

to demand collective sacrifice you must offer a social contract that benefits everyone." But, it continued, "today's crisis is laying bare how far many rich societies fall short of this ideal." It declared a need for "radical reforms—reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades.

The tragedy for the millions of new lower-caste voters is that their representatives, for whom they dutifully vote en masse, have looted the public coffers and become immensely rich and powerful while mouthing slogans about the oppression of their people.

Looking at the shape of international politics in the future, it's clear—bipolarity is inevitable. A cold war is a choice.

For many people, "advice from experts" is part of a larger strategy of domination by the new ruling class—the meritocrats. All advanced countries are now run by a meritocracy. Schools admit applicants based largely on their test scores, and companies hire and promote people based mostly on credentials of one sort or another.

The greatest moral failing of meritocracy is the belief that your success, your higher perch in society, makes you superior in any fundamental sense. After all, in democracies, at least, the people's wishes are the ultimate source of authority. So, let's be clear, as we navigate this pandemic and future crises, people need to listen to the experts. But the experts also need to listen to the people.

immigration, and cultural clashes. Governments have to protect

The new work model might be one in which people do much of their day-to-day work remotely, and come into the office only for meetings, presentations, and brainstorming sessions. Routine

concluded that "nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history." It noted that 75% of all land has been "severely altered" by human actions, as has 66% of the world's ocean area. Ecosystems are collapsing, and biodiversity is disappearing. As many as 1 million plant and animal species

Americans speak few languages, know little about foreign cultures, and remain unconvinced that they need to rectify this.

Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by Richard Nixon, described the new interpretation of the Second Amendment in an interview after his tenure as 'one of the greatest pieces of fraud-I repeat the word FRAUD-on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.

The same is true of Canada. In other words, some of the countries that beat the virus had big governments, while others had small ones. What was the common element? A competent, well-functioning, trusted state—the quality of government.

Cas Mudde, a Dutch political scientist, provides the most useful definition of populism: an ideology "that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups: 'the pure people' and 'the corrupt elite,' and argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.

War and organized violence have declined dramatically over the last two decades.

months. Various studies estimate that somewhere between 70 million and 430 million people will be pushed back into extreme poverty over the next few years.

the general magnitude of global warfare has decreased by over sixty percent [since the mid-1980s], falling by the

the general magnitude of global warfare has decreased by over sixty percent [since the mid-1980s], falling by the end of 2004 to its lowest level since the late 1950s.

even the staunchly conservative National Review published an essay that concluded, "What is clear is that in at least one regard American mobility is exceptional . . . where we stand out is in our limited upward mobility from the bottom.

Harvard's polymath professor Steven Pinker argues "that today we are probably living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence.

warriors and statesmen who survived believed that they had a duty to create a world that did not lapse back into nihilistic competition.