“The sum total of such policies is a state that is what can only be described as—grammatical propriety notwithstanding—“uniquely unique.” Allow me to give you some examples: North Korea is the world’s sole communist hereditary dynasty, the world’s only literate-industrialized-urbanized peacetime economy to have suffered a famine, the world’s most cultish totalitarian system, and the world’s most secretive, isolated country—albeit one with the world’s largest military in terms of manpower and defense spending proportional to its population and national income. The result is a most abnormal state, one that is able to exercise disproportionate influence in regional politics despite its relatively small territorial and population size and its exceedingly meager economic, political, and soft power, principally through a strategy of external provocations and internal repression.”

— Sung-Yoon Lee

A similar, shorter, quote also appears here:

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

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The sum total of such policies is a state that is what can only be described as—grammatical propriety notwithstanding—“…" by Sung-Yoon Lee?

Sung-Yoon Lee 11

Korea and East Asia scholar, professor

Related quotes

“What so impressed me on that first reading was the self-containedness of Tolkien's world. I suppose there are a few novelists who have created worlds that are uniquely their own -- Faulkner, for example, or Dickens. But since their world is fairly close to the actual world, it cannot really be called a unique creation. The only parallel that occurs to me is the Wagner Ring cycle, that one can only enter as if taking a holiday on a strange planet.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Tree By Tolkien (1974), p. 8-9

“We arrived from being the most isolated and closed communist regime in the world to one of the most open. Today we have a dynamic market economy, a vibrant, creative society.”

Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj (1963) Mongolian politician

Source: "Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj visits European Parliament" https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/20150605STO63234/mongolian-president-tsakhiagiin-elbegdorj-visits-european-parliament (9 June 2015)

“We have no aces to what the world is, to ontology, only to descriptions of the world… that is to say, epistemology… We should never say something in the world: 'it is a system'; only: "it may be described as a system.'”

Peter Checkland (1930) British management scientist

Checkland 1983, p. 671 cited in Stephen K. Probert (1998) "The Metaphysical Foundations of Soft and Hard Information Systems Methodologies". In: Robert Macredie (1998) Modelling for Added Value. p. 86

“[A world-system is] a system that is a world and which can be, most often has been, located in an area less than the entire globe. World-systems analysis argues that the units of social reality within which we operate, whose rules constrain us, are for the most part such world-systems (other than the now extinct, small mini-systems that once existed on the earth). World-system analysis argues that there have been thus far only two varieties of world-systems: world-economies and world empires. A world-empire (examples, the Roman Empire, Han China) are large bureaucratic structures with a single political center and an axial division of labor, but multiple cultures. A world-economy is a large axial division of labor with multiple political centers and multiple cultures.”

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) economic historian

Immanuel Wallerstein (2004, p. 98), as cited in: Graham Scambler. Contemporary Theorists for Medical Sociology, 2012. p. 255

“I think what gives my works whatever universality they have is that they use the metaphysical secret world to describe some realities of the overt world.”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

As quoted in "Master of the Secret World: John le Carré on Deception, Storytelling and American Hubris" by Andrew Ross, in Salon (21 October 1996); also in Conversations with John le Carré (2004) edited by Matthew Joseph Bruccoli and Judith Baughman, p. 141
Context: I use the furniture of espionage to amuse the reader, to make the reader listen to me, because most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage. I think what gives my works whatever universality they have is that they use the metaphysical secret world to describe some realities of the overt world.

“Systems thinking is only an epistemology, a particular way of describing the world. It does not tell us what the world is. Hence, strictly speaking, we should never say of something in the world: “It is a system,” only: “It may be described as a system.””

John Mingers researcher

John Mingers (2006) Realising Systems Thinking: Knowledge and Action in Management Science. p. 87.

“America is the greatest, freest, and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, What's So Great About America (2003), Ch. 6: America the Beautiful

“Each of us is unique, and if we don't respect that uniqueness, if we don't allow that which we are to surface, then the world doesn't have it.”

Martin de Maat (1949–2001) American theatre director

A Conversation with Martin de Maat (1998)

“If nature had been allowed to go on in its own way, everybody would have become a unique flower. Why should there be only roses in this world?”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Part 4: Betwixt Bewilderment and Understanding
The Mystique of Enlightenment (1982)
Context: I have one thing against medical technology. You see, the very desire to understand the human being is to control him — that is why I am not quite in sympathy. The day you control the endocrine glands, you will change the personality of man; you won't need any brainwashing. Brainwashing is a very elaborate process. If nature had been allowed to go on in its own way, everybody would have become a unique flower. Why should there be only roses in this world? What for? A grass flower or a dandelion flower has as much beauty, as much importance in the scheme of things. Why should there be only jasmine flowers, roses, or some other flower? So, the possibility is there of a change taking place which is sudden, not progressive. It has to happen in a very sudden and explosive way to break the whole thing.

“But what world says that [I'm wicked]? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Sung-Yoon Lee 11

Related quotes

Related topics