Quotes from George Friedman

Hitler believed nothing, so he was free to believe in anything.

The idea that emerged from both the New Deal and World War II was that a state managed by experts dedicated to solutions without an ideology would do for the country what it did for the war: it would breed success. But of course, this became a principle, the principle became a belief, and the belief became an ideology. The ideology created a class who felt entitled to govern and who were believed to be suitable to govern. It

Wars are times of intense technological transformation, because societies invest – sometimes with extensive borrowing – when and where matters of life and death are at stake.

We have to remember that presidents are simply the street signs. The cycle is working itself out in the murky depths.

Terrorism is an act of violence whose primary purpose is to create fear and, through that, a political result.

The Mediterranean was, before the northern European industrial revolution, one of the wealthiest regions in the world. Divisions between Muslim North Africa and Christian southern Europe were contained, if not always peacefully. The

the idea that the past is obsolete is always resisted at an era's end.

The United States will deal with it as it always does, with its citizens going through a decade of intense political rage at each other, accompanied by an economic crisis and a social one: the old against the young, and the problem of innovation leading to instability. Finally, the political process will create a solution, with a failing president who worships the old cycle, followed by one who will claim credit for presiding over the new cycle and its solutions.

In the course of the century, so many individual decisions are made that no single one of them is ever critical. Each decision is lost in the torrent of judgments that make up a century.

There are endless unknowns, and no forecast of a century can be either complete or utterly correct.

The problem was that the American media and public could never distinguish between the lie and the truth.

Recent presidents have gone off on ad hoc adventures. They have set unattainable goal because they have framed the issue incorrectly, as they believed their own rhetoric.

And here's a fact that should get you thinking: when Social Security set the retirement age at sixty-five, the average life expectancy for a male was sixty-one. It makes us realize how little Social Security was designed to pay out. The subsequent surge in life expectancy has changed the math of retirement entirely.

Horthy was no more of an anti-Semite than good manners required, and this was not something he may have wanted himself, but his duty was to preserve an independent Hungary, and if putting Jews into labor battalions was what was needed, he was going to do what was needed. For

Empires always spawn demons,

The idea that the president has the power to craft a new strategy both overstates his power and understates the power of reality crafted by those who came before him. We are all trapped in circumstances into which we were born and choices that were made for us.

my literary agent, for his support and encouragement

Capital may have no country, as Marx argued, but the lower classes not only have countries but cling to them. Economic issues and cultural issues merge, fear of the outsider rises, and the result is political pressure from the Right. This is not confined only to the failing countries. It is there in northern European countries as well, even Germany. Or the United States.

There is a quote attributed to Honoré de Balzac: behind every great fortune there is a great crime.

So as soon as you want something to happen you begin skewing the data to support it. Our stuff is invaluable to decision-makers precisely because we have no ax to grind.

Wars are times of intense technological transformation, because societies invest - sometimes with extensive borrowing - when and where matters of life and death are at stake.

Well the most likely emerging countries are Japan, Turkey, and Poland. So I would say Eastern Europe, the Middle East and a maritime war by Japan with the United States enjoying its own pleasures.

The tragedy of the human condition is that the thing that makes us most human - community - originates in the inhumanity of war.

The poets think about war more than the social scientists.