Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 1, Is There an Enduring Logic of Conflict in World Politics?, p. 2.
Context: The world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a strange cocktail of continuity and change. Some aspects of international politics have not changed since Thucydides. There is a certain logic of hostility, a dilemma about security that goes with interstate politics. Alliances, balance of power, and choices in in policy between war and compromise have remained similar over the millennia.
Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 64
“The twentieth century was like twenty years' worth of change at today's rate of change.”
"The Singularity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)
1790s, Letter to the Addressers (1792)
Context: It is from a strange mixture of tyranny and cowardice that exclusions have been set up and continued. The boldness to do wrong at first, changes afterwards into cowardly craft, and at last into fear. The Representatives in England appear now to act as if they were afraid to do right, even in part, lest it should awaken the nation to a sense of all the wrongs it has endured. This case serves to shew that the same conduct that best constitutes the safety of an individual, namely, a strict adherence to principle, constitutes also the safety of a Government, and that without it safety is but an empty name. When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example of the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other and the little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich. But the guarantee, to be effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal.
“How strange that the world should change because of words, and words change because of the world”
Source: Birds Without Wings
On Behalf of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries (1979)
“It's a strange new world out there and the rules have changed: It's every princess for herself.”
Source: Bloodfever
“The twenty-first century will be the American century”
Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 18
Context: The twenty-first century will be the American century.
Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxviii
“Don't ask the world to change — you change first.”
"The Death of Me", p. 151
Awareness (1992)
Source: Awareness: Conversations with the Masters
Context: Don't ask the world to change — you change first. Then you'll get a good enough look at the world so that you'll be able to change whatever you think ought to be changed. Take the obstruction out of your own eye. If you don't you have lost the right to change anyone or anything. Till you are aware of yourself, you have no right to interfere with anyone else or with the world.
Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 47
