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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

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George Friedman
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: February 1
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More quotes by George Friedman

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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.
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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.
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The man who hates war more than he hates the Nazis is a wicked man.
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The tragedy of the human condition is that the thing that makes us most human - community - originates in the inhumanity of war.
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The warrior must continue to make decisions in the face of extreme circumstances. He cannot afford to get angry or frightened.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Strategy is something that emerges from reality, while tactics might be chosen.
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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?
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The most horrible sort of war is civil war.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When I went to war, I did not go making geopolitical calculations. I went to war with a lust.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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