Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Idealism is frequently another word for self-righteousness, a disease that can only be corrected by a profound understanding power in its complete sense.
George Friedman
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
George Friedman
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: February 1
Businessperson
Geopolitician
Political Scientist
Writer
Buda Pest
Profound
Disease
Word
Understanding
Corrected
Sense
Idealism
Another
Frequently
Power
Righteousness
Self
Complete
More quotes by George Friedman
Assad's mother was a terror. He was terrified of her and she kept saying to him, you're not like your father. That's interesting, but it's useless information. It doesn't tell me anything about how the first and second armored brigades are going to operate.
George Friedman
The British bombed German cities [during World War II] to keep the workers awake at night. So instead of dropping one bomb, we sent a thousand planes and, yes, we took out the factory sometimes, but we also took out the city. It reached the point where we wanted more efficient ways to destroy a city. The result was nuclear weapons.
George Friedman
One of the great famines in human history took place during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. [At the same time] Western journalists were reporting how marvelously Chinese society was working. We know so little [about what happens in China].
George Friedman
Every theory I've seen that contains an explanation of war fails. I think they fail for the same reason that explanations of sex fail. War derives from things so deep and so complex, I'm thoroughly baffled by it at the end of the day.
George Friedman
I'm not a journalist. So I didn't down and let Assad charm me. I didn't walk away and say my god he's got an Apple computer and he really likes Beyonce so he must be a liberal.
George Friedman
Europeans have always thought of U.S. presidents as either naive, as they did with Jimmy Carter, or as cowboys, as they did with Lyndon Johnson, and held them in contempt in either case.
George Friedman
We cannot anticipate the moral circumstances under which we will live. And therefore [I refuse] to say that I will not live in a moral circumstance that requires violence.
George Friedman
The warrior must continue to make decisions in the face of extreme circumstances. He cannot afford to get angry or frightened.
George Friedman
When I went to war, I did not go making geopolitical calculations. I went to war with a lust.
George Friedman
There has never been a century that has not had a systemic war - a systemic war, meaning when the entire system convulses. From the Seven Years' War in Europe to the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century to the World Wars, every century has one.
George Friedman
The most horrible sort of war is civil war.
George Friedman
Germany is the new pig. Germany depends on exports and its markets are drying up. When the Germans start getting 10% unemployment, 15% unemployment, which is the real variable, how are they going to handle it?
George Friedman
Anger does not make history. Power does. And power may be supplemented by anger, but it derives from more fundamental realities geography, demographics, technology, and culture.
George Friedman
The man who hates war more than he hates the Nazis is a wicked man.
George Friedman
The tragedy of the human condition is that the thing that makes us most human - community - originates in the inhumanity of war.
George Friedman
Italy is the fourth-largest economy in Europe and the eighth-largest economy in the world, and its banking system is collapsing. And Germany is desperate. It must maintain its standard of living. It can only do that with exports and Deutsche Bank is very exposed to Italian debt. But so is the rest of Europe.
George Friedman
The important thing in war is that there is an element of rage, but you must remain very distant from it.
George Friedman
Strategy is something that emerges from reality, while tactics might be chosen.
George Friedman
What is American strategy first of all? So American strategy is to command the seas, right? The foundation of our power is sea control. Nobody can invade us, but we can invade them.
George Friedman
I cannot understand how something as ubiquitous as war can simply be dismissed as pathological. It is not clear to me that it is an unspeakable evil. If it is, I need proof of it.
George Friedman
