“Objectively speaking, the history of North Korean state has been one of an ambitious social if brutal experiment that ended in a very ugly disaster. Essentially, the 70 years of the Kim Family's rule have been the wasted years. The Kim family did not merely build one of the world’s most “perfect” Stalinist dictatorships, but also managed to transform into a basket case what once, in the 1940s, was the most advanced industrial economy of East Asia outside Japan. However, one should not expect that such a pessimistic, if honest, view of North Korea’s past, is going to be enthusiastically embraced by those North Koreans who bother to care about such matters.”

— Andrei Lankov

Get Ready For Selective Amnesia (November 2015)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Andrei Lankov 11

Russian academic 1963

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“For the average North Korean over the last two decades, the times of Kim Il Sung have often been seen as a lost era of order and stability, in which everyone could be sure that twice a month they would receive food rations sufficient for survival, and essentially free of charge. This was also a time when corruption was kept under control and was largely invisible, material inequality was also almost unnoticeable. Objectively speaking, it was Kim Il Sung’s policies that made the disaster of the 1990s unavoidable. But this had little impact on public perception, and he continues to be held in high esteem by many. Remarkably, such sentiments toward the late Generalissimo are even expressed by refugees – not usually known for their sympathies for the North Korean system and its embodiment, the Kim family. Thus, it is that Kim Il Sung remains venerated, and due to the luck of dying in time, has a remarkably good reputation in death. The opposite is very much the case with his unfortunate son, Kim Jong Il, who inherited power in 1994 and reigned for 17 turbulent years, till 2011.”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

Kim Jong Un's Popularity, Explained (September 2015)

“The great famine of 1994-98 was to a large extent the inviolable result of the policies that Kim Il Sung had pursued for decades. The famine was brought about by Kim Il Sung’s fanatical belief in a hyper-centralized, state-managed agriculture, as well as an excessive reliance on (unacknowledged) foreign aid, not to mention militarization run amok. However, if the mine was planted (unintentionally, of course) by Kim Il Sung, it went off under the rule of his son. Hence, most North Koreans blame Kim Jong Il, rather than his father, for the economic disasters of the 1990s.”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

Kim Jong Un's Popularity, Explained (September 2015)

“Kim Il-sung, one of the most prominent, bright and heroic socialist leaders of the present day, whose history is one of the most beautiful thing a revolutionary may have written in the service of the cause of socialism.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech (19 April 1966) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1966/esp/f190466e.html

“One of the most striking developments has been the rise, fall and rise again of the semiconductor industry of the United States, which is, once again, the dominant player in the most advanced semiconductor product-markets.”

Peter Dicken (1938) British geographer

Source: Global Shift (2003) (Fourth Edition), Chapter 12, The Semiconductor Industry, p. 435

“China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 86.

“The experience of the democratic countries with the most advanced economies also tells us that no single pattern, or even a dominant one, has emerged; and what has emerged is a product of the special characteristics and the unique history of each country.”

Robert A. Dahl (1915–2014) American political scientist

After the Revolution? (1970; 1990), Ch. 3 : Democracy and Markets

“Bread has always been one of the oldest subjects of fetishism and obsession in my work, the first and the one to which I have remained the most faithful. I painted the same subject 19 years ago 'Basket of Bread, 1929.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

By making a very careful comparison of the two pictures, everyone can study all the history of painting right there, from the linear charm of primitivism to stereoscopic hyper-aestheticism.
Dali's quote, 1945; as cited by R. Descharnes (1985), in Salvador Dalí. Abrams. p. 94. ISBN 0-8109-0830-1
Dali just finished his second painting 'Basket of Bread, 1945'
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1941 - 1950

“I joke that it took our family 100 years to travel one mile. But what a journey it has been. Our family story is the story of millions of families whose ancestors came to these shores from all around the world in search of freedom, opportunity, and equality.”

Gary Locke (1950) American politician

"Gary Locke keynotes anti-hate summit" in Northwest Asian Weekly https://nwasianweekly.com/2021/10/gary-locke-keynotes-anti-hate-summit/ (29 October 2021)

“I started about five years ago when I did a hospital visit and was shocked at what a huge difference the [Starlight Children's Foundation] makes for not only these children but also their families, who are also affected. I consider family one of the most important aspects of life, because at the end of the day your family is who is always going to be there for you. When it comes to these children, their family is all they have because some of them never get to leave the hospital.”

Corbin Bleu (1989) American actor, model, dancer, producer, and singer-songwriter

As quoted in "Corbin Bleu aids Starlight charity" in Variety (3 December 2009) http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118012141.html?categoryId=3834&cs=1

“One of the most significant results of the industrial struggle during the past fifty years has been the creation of a condition of a vast inequality of wealth and income.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

"The Commercial Motive" ibid.
Context: One of the most significant results of the industrial struggle during the past fifty years has been the creation of a condition of a vast inequality of wealth and income. This inequality is so extreme that it now constitutes one of the chief sources of bitterness and strife in modern life.... not that the poor have been getting poorer but that the number and sizes of great fortunes have increased enormously.

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Andrei Lankov 11

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