In China, the state controls the corporations, whereas in the United States, the corporations control the state.

The developed world should neither shelter nor militarily destabilize authoritarian regimes unless those regimes represent an imminent threat to the national security of other states. Developed states should instead work to create the conditions most favorable for a closed regime's safe passage through the least stable segment of the J curve however and whenever the slide toward instability comes. And developed states should minimize the risk these states pose the rest of the world as their transition toward modernity begins.

We live in a fantastically wealthy country. We don't have to worry about food. We don't have to worry about clothing. We don't have to worry about our safety. It's very easy for me to be an environmentalist. It's very easy for me to care about making sure that we protect the forests and the whales, and all that stuff.

The real question is not are there other forms of life in the universe, but are there other intelligent forms of life out there right now. Because the universe is not only really big but it's also really long. It's been around for a long time; it's going to be around for a long time.

Everything today is "transient." Technology and its ability to empower actors large and small evolve so quickly that we have to get used to living in a world that exists in a more or less constant state of flux.

There is too large a divergence at the moment in the interests and values of the world's most powerful states.

I think graffiti is part of Berlin culture. You think about what the Berlin wall meant and how visible that was in everyone's life. How it was a part of their very identity.