Democracy is the only game in town. The problem is [when] people start to believe that it is not a game worth playing.

Transparency is not about restoring trust in institutions. Transparency is the politics of managing mistrust.

The Church of TED is very optimistic. Bulgarians are some of the most pessimistic in the world. There are the Happy, the Unhappy and the Bulgarians.

Democracy has always been in crisis: democracy is all about practicing the art of bearable dissatisfaction. In democratic societies, people often complain about their leaders and their institutions. The gap between the ideal democracy and the existing one cannot be bridged.

Bulgaria has been deindustrialized by interest groups who extracted state assets like oil states extract the oil in their ground.

Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments.

[It's] difficult to engage people in politics when they believe that what really matters is where they personally stand.