The masses cannot ultimately be free: only the individual can be.

It is development, not poverty, that causes upheaval and terrorism.

Travel is like a good challenging book: It demands presentness-the ability to live completely in the moment.

It is easy to be a moral perfectionist when one is politically unaccountable.

An idea is only an idea if it causes unease, debate and reflection. By that standard, Thomas Homer-Dixon's concept of an 'ingenuity gap' is truly a new idea. I can think of no other new concept that so fully condenses all of the challenges we face as a human civilization than the 'ingenuity gap'. Homer-Dixon has found a way to unite all of our concerns about economics, war, population growth, complexity, etc. under a single heading. He is one of an elite group of academics who can write for a mass audience.

It is time to understand the environment for what it is: the national security issue of the early twenty-first century.

What Americans cant face is that one of the reasons that the Russians and the Chinese were so impressed with us during the Cold War was the fact that Nixon and Kissinger went on bombing despite public reaction.