Quotes from George Friedman

the most efficient way to use military power is to disrupt emerging powers before they can become even marginally threatening.

In the end, the problem of Europe is the same problem that haunted its greatest moment, the Enlightenment. It is the Faustian spirit, the desire to possess everything even at the cost of their souls.

Idealism is frequently another word for self-righteousness, a disease that can only be corrected by a profound understanding power in its complete sense.

Cultures live in one of three states. The first state is barbarism. Barbarians believe that the customs of their village are the laws of nature and that anyone who doesn't live the way they live is beneath contempt and requiring redemption or destruction. The third state is decadence. Decadents cynically believe that nothing is better than anything else. If they hold anyone in contempt, it is those who believe in anything. Nothing is worth fighting for.

When there is a surplus of money chasing assets such as homes, stocks, or bonds, prices rise and interest rates fall. Eventually prices reach irrational levels, and then they collapse. Money becomes scarce, and inefficient businesses are forced to shut down. Efficient businesses survive, and the cycle starts again. This has been repeated over and over since modern capitalism arose.

Freedom of action based on commander's intent means that the expectation is success, not a particular way of achieving success.

It is interesting to note that Copernicus was German/Polish, Luther was German, and Gutenberg was German.

While America's imperial power might degrade, power of this magnitude does not collapse quickly except through war. German, Japanese, French, and British power declined not because of debt but because of wars

since the EU was created, there have been more wars in Europe than between 1945 and 1992. Many

Pero su meta no era ganar. Ni siquiera estaba claro qué significaba ganar. Su meta era sólo perturbar al mundo musulmán y ponerlo en contra de sí mismo, para que no emergiera un imperio islámico.

In the fog of history and myth, the American role in championing and underwriting European integration is frequently forgotten, along with the resistance of the Europeans.

All nations contain some elements of wildness. None have institutionalized the chaos as has the United States.

But wishes don't make policy. Policy is made by reality, and the reality of what has been created, whether intentionally or not, can't be abandoned without breathtakingly severe consequences.

Presidents may run for office on ideological platforms and promised policies, but their presidency is actually defined by the encounter between fortune and virtue, between the improbable and the unexpected—the thing that neither their ideology nor their proposals prepared them for—and their response. The president's job is to anticipate what will happen, minimize the unpredictability, then respond to the unexpected with cunning and power.

the American people must mature. We are an adolescent lot, expecting solutions to insoluble problems and perfection in our leaders.

Maintaining the balance of power should be as fundamental to American foreign policy as the Bill of Rights is to domestic policy.

Their job as leader was not to solve the problem – the president really has little control over the economy – but to convince the public not only that he has a plan but that he is altogether confident in the plan's success and that only a cynic or someone in different to the public's well-being would dare to question him on the details.

The events we have passed through form a coherent pattern and the political actors who have shaped the world are rational--if not necessarily moral or decent--actors. Americans tend to think of its leaders as fools and knaves and of its enemies as psychotic. This seems to comfort us. While America's leaders might be knaves, they are not fools, and while our enemies might have utterly different moral values that are repugnant to us, they are far from insane.

It is good, as I have said, to be neither victim nor victimizer. Unfortunately, it is not possible. What

Because immigrants came here precisely for the social and economic benefits, refusing to learn English was self-defeating.

The technocracy has the upper hand against the white working class, although it is a tenuous hand, as can be seen by the election of Donald Trump. But this is merely the opening confrontation. Pressure on the technocracy will build. America is heading toward an institutional crisis in which the competence of the technocracy and the institutions of the federal government will be questioned.

The history of the twenty-first century, therefore, particularly the first half, will revolve around two opposing struggles. One will be secondary powers forming coalitions to try to contain and control the United States. The second will be the United States acting preemptively to prevent an effective coalition from forming.

The United States doesn't need to win wars. It needs to simply disrupt things so the other side can't build up sufficient strength to challenge it.

Inventing the government was the preface to inventing a nation. Governments can be machines, but nations have to accommodate the actual lives of people. People don't live abstract lives. They live real ones, within nations, and those nations give them a sense of who they are.