From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Corruption is a phenomenon that has existed for thousands of years, but only now is it becoming an unacceptable event. Corruption destroys societies, hinders development and undermines security. Note what happened in the Middle East and North Africa… corruption was one of the triggers of unrest in these countries. It appears that people are fed-up of corruption, they want change, and they want it now.
In today's United States, asking a republican parent if it was OK for their daughter to marry a democrat would elicit a response similar to asking parents years ago if their daughter could marry a black person – the polarization is astounding.
Today's politicians can't lead public opinion, because they're frightened of it – and we're so consumed by constitutional crises, that there's just no real chance that politicians can give these issues sufficient thought.
Once the cancer of authoritarianism gets into the veins and organs of society, it's not easy to get-out – they have this very specific way of paralysing political mechanisms and dismantling the fundamental human logic.
We have to get out of this 'tax to spend' mentality and think about using resources to create investment funds that support local businesses, while also expecting to get something back as those businesses appreciate.
When global markets open up, if you're selling t-shirts in the US or Denmark, you're disadvantaged because countries like Bangladesh produce them more efficiently and cheaply. This has fuelled arguments advocating caution when it comes to free trade. We've conducted what is, to my knowledge, the first study attempting to quantify both the benefits and costs of trade, rather than focusing solely on the benefits.
When Tiananmen Square happened, tanks were sent in to deal with them. It's not a joke. Do whatever it takes to stay united… People in front of tanks were crushed. The unity of China is more important than those people in Tiananmen Square. Anyone who undermines the constitution shall be put to death
It's not enough to sit in our ivory towers or offices and think we have to go out and talk to people who are affected by a problem to understand what's going on, on the ground.
The sad reality is that if we tried to pass that declaration today, the UN General Assembly would fail to do so. Firstly, we don't have someone like Eleanor Roosevelt as an advocate for human rights, and where previously the US played a leadership role, Trump would no doubt block virtually every human rights pillar associated with the declaration.
There are various forms of hostage-taking, each with distinct characteristics. Broadly speaking, one can categorise them into political and criminal hostage-takings. Political hostage-taking involves abducting someone to gain a political leverage—this is the first type. The second type is criminal hostage-taking, where the motive is ransom.
The single greatest deficit that Europe faces today is not a budget, current-account or trade deficit… but a growth one. With stronger growth, a lot of these problems would be quite a bit easier to handle, if not to resolve.
There are very few African-American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me... And there are very few African-American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.