A Quote by John Ralston Saul

Grand economic theories rarely last more than a few decades. Some, if they are particularly in tune with technological or political events, may make it to half a century. Beyond that, little short of military force can keep them in place.

John Ralston Saul

Quote Topics

Beyond Century Decades Economic Events Few Force Grand Half Half A Century Keep Last Little Make May Military Military Force More Particularly Place Political Rarely Short Some Technological Than Them Theories Tune

Quote Author

John Ralston Saul
Canadian - Author
Born: June 19, 1947

There is little doubt that we are in the midst of a revolution of a much more profound and fundamental nature than the social and political revolutions of the last half century.

Arthur Erickson

The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological-technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science. Clearly, no scientist better represents those advances than Albert Einstein: TIME's Person of the Century.

Stephen Hawking

It's too low, and if Europe wants to be a force in the world it needs to be more than a moral and political and economic force, which Europe is because it shares many of our values and demonstrates them around the world. But it has to have the military power that goes with that as well.

Ashton Carter

Particularly over the last few decades, technological innovation has offered opportunities to bring people and nations together - but it has also created significant new challenges to law enforcement.

Loretta Lynch

Mainstream economic theories popular in the last several decades have tended to downplay the government's role in markets and to increase skepticism about even that more limited role. Austerity, particularly in Europe, has added to the problem. It has not worked, even on its own terms.

Mariana Mazzucato

Nations are political and military entities, and so are blocs of nations. But it doesn't necessarily follow from this that they are also the basic, salient entities of economic life or that they are particularly useful for probing the mysteries of economic structure, the reasons for rise and decline of wealth. Indeed, the failure of national governments and blocs of nations to force economic life to do their bidding suggests some sort of essential irrelevance.

Jane Jacobs

Contrary to what professional economists will typically tell you, economics is not a science. All economic theories have underlying political and ethical assumptions, which make it impossible to prove them right or wrong in the way we can with theories in physics or chemistry.

Ha-Joon Chang

United States has comparative advantage in military force. It tends to react to anything at first with military force, that's what it's good at. And I think they overdid it. There was more military force than was necessary.

Noam Chomsky

I think that over the last few decades, we have seen better economic outcomes than in the past.

Martin Feldstein

The greatest existential risks over the coming decades or century arise from certain, anticipated technological breakthroughs that we might make in particular, machine super intelligence, nanotechnology and synthetic biology. Each of these has an enormous potential for improving the human condition by helping cure disease, poverty, etc. But one could imagine them being misused, used to create powerful weapon systems, or even some kind of accidental destructive scenario, where we suddenly are in possession of some technology that's far more powerful than we are able to control or use wisely.

Nick Bostrom

I think subsuming political and economic conflicts into some grand 'clash of civilisations' theory or 'the West versus the rest' binary is a particularly insidious form of ideological deception.

Pankaj Mishra

The United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might.

Fidel Castro

Police officers today are a protected class, one no politician wants to oppose. Law enforcement interests may occasionally come up short on budgetary issues, but legislatures rarely if ever pass new laws to hold police more accountable, to restrict their powers, or to make them more transparent. In short, police today embody all of the threats the Founders feared were posed by standing armies, plus a few additional ones they couldn't have anticipated.

Radley Balko

Although the war in which you fought took place more than half-a-century ago, your courage, your sacrifice and your patriotism reaches through the decades and inspires us today.

Mike Ferguson

NATO was formed post-World War II. We're a little bit more than a half-century old. Do we want NATO to go on for another half-century? I think that the answer is, sitting here today: I don't know. If I had to bet on it, I would say, yeah, we have to have these alliances going forward and see who's going to pay for them.