“When I was growing up in the 1950s, the twenty-first century was an idea associated with science fiction, not a reality in which I would live. Practical people focus on the next moment and leave the centuries to dreamers. But the truth is that the twenty-first century has turned out to be a very practical concern to me. I will spent a good deal of my life in it.”

— George Friedman

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 254

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George Friedman 25

American businessman and political scientist 1949

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