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.

Why did the Germans and Japanese keep fighting after 1943 when every rational hope of victory had disappeared?

I think the condition of imperial denial is a handicap because if you do not recognize that you are essentially performing the functions of an empire, you are incapable of learning from the mistakes of past empires.

In the financial sector, those whom the gods want to destroy they first teach math.

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.

As a teacher, my strategy is to encourage questioning. I'm the least authoritarian professor you'll ever meet.

American Empire- it is an empire that lacks the drive to export its capital, its people and its culture to those backward regions which need them most urgently and which, if they are neglected, will breed the greatest threats to its security. It is an empire, in short, that dare not speak its name. It is an empire in denial.