My arguments for liberal empire or whatever you want to call it - hegemony, primacy, you name it - are really activated by a sense that the alternatives involve more violence, more repression, more hardship.

The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man.

It’s our generation that is witnessing the end of Western predominance. The average American used to be more than 20 times richer than the average Chinese. Now it’s just five times, and soon it will be 2.5 times.

You really struggle to be a successful empire if you are also the world's biggest debtor.

I refuse to accept that Western civilization is like some hopeless old version of Microsoft DOS, doomed to freeze, then crash. I still cling to the hope that the United States is the Mac to Europe's PC, and that if one part of the West can successfully update and reboot itself, it's America.

My arguments for liberal empire or whatever you want to call it - hegemony, primacy, you name it - are really activated by a sense that the alternatives involve more violence, more repression, more hardship.

Today, the average Korean works a thousand hours more a year than the average German. A thousand. ... That is the end of the Great Divergence.