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The important thing in war is that there is an element of rage, but you must remain very distant from it.
George Friedman
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George Friedman
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: February 1
Businessperson
Geopolitician
Political Scientist
Writer
Buda Pest
Elements
War
Must
Important
Thing
Distant
Element
Rage
Remain
More quotes by 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
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
One definition of the wicked is that they will resort to whatever means are necessary to achieve their ends. Therefore, if those who oppose wickedness don't learn the art of war, they will be helpless.
George Friedman
It has always struck me as the world's great fortune that the two great superpowers were the United States and the Soviet Union, who managed the Cold War with meticulous care in retrospect. Imagine the European diplomats of 1914 or 1938 armed with nuclear weapons. It is easy to believe they would not have been as cautious.
George Friedman
The first thing you have to do is understand what success looks like. And to understand what success looks like you have to understand the intent. If you understand that intent is to make sure the sea lines are secure, then suddenly bombing Kosovo makes sense, because you don't want Serbia to reemerge as a major power.
George Friedman
When I went to war, I did not go making geopolitical calculations. I went to war with a lust.
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
The warrior must continue to make decisions in the face of extreme circumstances. He cannot afford to get angry or frightened.
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
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
What is the great fear of the United States? That an Eastern power will build a navy to challenge us. How do you keep them from doing that? Keep them at each other's throats so they don't have any money to do this. This is why we fought the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War.
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
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
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
In a way, we can have a much easier discussion about the future of technology than we can about why a young man kills another man in a war.
George Friedman
The most horrible sort of war is civil 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
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
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
