Rutger Bregman Quotes

Since the war [WWII], the world has been rushing forward at an unprecedented and exhilarating speed … Yet Britain lags behind, lacking the will or the plan which can bring this future within the reach of us all.

I think there is some kind of disillusionment in the West about the gains of modernity and of economic growth and it takes a form of skepticism about the gains of prosperity generally.

We all know that China is industrializing at a growth rate of 8 to 10 percent per year. China is on track to pass the U.S. as the largest economy in the world in 20 to 25 years, and China is determined to give its people a chance at this high standard of living that we enjoy.

What seems extraordinary is that the richest countries in the world, in terms of economic output, are the ones where we work hardest.

If you look through the century, certain things have gotten better and certain things have gotten worse. I wouldn't say overall that things have gotten better. I think you could say things have gotten worse, but I don't think you could say that things have gotten better. Overall. You can't say that.

Regardless of politics, our world will continue to change rapidly.

Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe.

I think that we live in a highly specialized, technologically advanced society. Highly developed societies tend to have very remote understandings about what underlies our prosperity.

Jobs are critically important, but looking at economic change through the impact on jobs has always been a difficult way to think about economic progress.

I think it is fair to say that it is under a great deal of stress, and if I am asking for significant changes, it is because the world is going through significant changes.

Openness has been vital to Asia's fast growth in the past and it will continue to be crucial for the area's further development.

Once we started to urbanize, we put ourselves on this treadmill. We traded away stability for growth. And growth requires change.

Richer people tend to be happier than poor people, and people in poor countries tend to be less happy than people in rich countries.

The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilization.

Economic developments made modern democracy possible.

The major challenge facing us is to elevate our national life to the highest level of civilization and prosperity.

More people in more countries, both developing and developed, have experienced larger increases in living standards than in any prior fifty year period.

America…could within twenty years bring us to a degree of development which Turks, left to themselves, would not be able to achieve in a century. It would make Turkey prosperous, rich and happy and turn Turks into a strong and civilized nation.

Growth and prosperity. These are the blocks with which we must build our welfare society.

For most of history, the prime source of human insecurity was nature. Capitalist societies have been oriented toward innovation and dynamism, to the creation of new knowledge, new products, and new modes of production and distribution. All this has shifted the locus of insecurity from nature to the economy.

Economic prosperity is a great engine for change.

We live in a dynamic time, where the rate of change and the rate of innovation are very high. It’s not equal in all segments or sectors of the economy, but we are seeing a lot of innovation in certain sectors, and I expect that to continue.

This is an anxiety driven world - the whole world is driven by anxiety. It is anxiety about the aftermath of the global financial crisis; it's anxiety about inequality and about computers replacing jobs.

Globalization and technical change are the guarantee of our future prosperity. And reversing on that will not only make things worse, but it will make things worse for a very large number of people around the world who have benefitted - people in China and India who have been dragged out of the most awful poverty.

The issues are by some geometric number - 100 or 200 or 500 - times more complicated today than we appreciated them to be when Franklin Roosevelt was around.