Felix

“Ask yourself which electoral systems have been widely replicated across the globe. The answer is clear: not ours. We've been very powerful in exporting democracy, just not our form of democracy. By contrast, other systems, those characterized by proportional representation and parliamentary selection, hae been widely embraced throughout the world.”
― Maxwell Stearns

“Many people believe that it is OK to be like China for a time, because when the crisis ends we can go back to being like Britain again. These people are making a serious mistake. We cannot switch in and out of totalitarianism at will. Because a free society is a question of attitude, it is dead once the attitude changes.”
― Michael P. Senger, Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World

“It is said that autism is like having a different operating system from other people. ... Most people are Windows PCs, the arty people are Macs, and we run on Linux. We will need programs to help us interact with the majority of Windows people. And at our heart is a different, not inferior, operating system.”
― Richard Maguire

“European statesmen of the First World War era did—to some extent—recognize the problem and its significance. As soon as they began to plan their annexation of the Middle East, Allied leaders recognized that Islam’s hold on the region was the main feature of the political landscape with which they would have to contend. Lord Kitchener, it will be remembered, initiated in 1914 a policy designed to bring the Moslem faith under Britain’s sway. When it looked as though that might not work—for the Sherif Hussein’s call to the Faithful in 1916 fell on deaf ears—Kitchener’s associates proposed instead to sponsor other loyalties (to a federation of Arabic-speaking peoples, or to the family of King Hussein, or to about-to-be-created countries such as Iraq) as a rival to pan-Islam. Indeed they framed the postwar Middle East settlement with that object (among others) in view.”
― David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East