Larry Diamond famous quotes

I think that it’s premature to call Libya a democracy because political order is still so fragile there and the command by the state over the means of violence is still so inadequate that I think state building remains a major challenge. And until the militias can be reined in and the authority of the democratically-elected state can really be firmly established, there’s still tremendous fragility and vulnerability in the unfolding story in Libya.
-- Larry Diamond

#Mean #Thinking #Order

I think you have a deeply anxious leadership in China that knows its legitimacy is drifting away, that’s sending its [personal] money and its children abroad because they have no faith in the future of their own regime.
-- Larry Diamond

#Children #Thinking #Legitimacy

I am very optimistic about the long run prospects for democracy in China. Chinese society is being dramatically and rapidly transformed. And there’s rising evidence that the new generation not only lacks faith in communism anymore, they think it’s a joke. They’re very cynical about their leadership and they want democratic change.
-- Larry Diamond

#Running #Optimistic #Thinking

I think it is extremely important that the West support this experiment [of Tunisian democracy] with investment, with aid, with symbolic support, not just flows of democracy assistance …If Tunisia can’t make it, what are the prospects for the rest of the Arab world?
-- Larry Diamond

#Thinking #Support #Democracy

The problem in Burma is the problem in Egypt, the problem you refer to in Yemen, and the problem in a lot of these countries in the world: that you can get stuck in the process of transition, in what’s been called a competitive authoritarian… a pseudo democratic regime.
-- Larry Diamond

#Country #Egypt #Transition

I think that it’s premature to call Libya a democracy because political order is still so fragile there and the command by the state over the means of violence is still so inadequate that I think state building remains a major challenge. And until the militias can be reined in and the authority of the democratically-elected state can really be firmly established, there’s still tremendous fragility and vulnerability in the unfolding story in Libya.
-- Larry Diamond

#Mean #Thinking #Order

We two remake our world by naming it / Together, knowing what words mean for us / And for the other for whom current coin / Is cold speech--but we say, the tree, the pool, / And see the fire in the air, the sun, our sun, / Anybody's sun, the world's sun, but here, now / Particularly our sun....

The interesting adults are always the school failures, the weird ones, the losers, the malcontents, this isn’t wishful thinking. It’s the rule.

Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.

Because of a friend, life is a little stronger, fuller, more gracious thing for the friend's existence, whether he be near or far. If the friend is close at hand, that is best; but if he is far away he still is there to think of, to wonder about, to hear from, to write to, to share life and experience with, to serve, to honor, to admire, to love.

Indo-European peoples and Semitic peoples are today still completely different... Jews almost everywhere form a special society... Muslims (the Semitic spirit is today represented mainly by Islam) and the Europeans stand face to face like two beings of different species, having nothing common in the way of thinking and feeling...

If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us.

I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.

When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order (unlike the world of events and actions whose permanent condition is change and disorder).

A man's respect for law and order exists in precise relationship to the size of his paycheck.

In order to be artists we need to be in our studios, in our private rooms... in our private personal space... that sacred protected space, so we can make our work. That's the only work that's worth making, right? That's the place where we can be free enough and vulnerable enough to share what we have to share.