Quotes from David Runciman

This is the world in which everyone is sensitised to risk but indifferent to fate.

On the other hand, had Obama refused to permit Trump's inauguration, on the grounds that he was still occupying the White House, or that he was planning to install Clinton there, then democracy in America would have been done for, at least for now.

Dictators and tyrants are the ones who lead their people over a cliff.

Weak democracies are vulnerable to coup d'états because their institutions cannot absorb a frontal assault.

Bad things happen in nice places, and nice things happen in bad places. But that doesn't mean the places themselves are hard to tell apart.