Richard Holbrooke Quotes

Even with, or perhaps, because of, this background, I have over the past few years sensed a very dramatic change in attitude on the part of Prince Edward Islanders towards the on-going rush for so-called modernization.

For many societies, the journey to modernity has been painful and costly.

I am not afraid of new inventions or improvements, nor bigoted to the practices of our forefathers. It is that bigotry which keeps the Indians in a state of barbarism in the midst of the arts and would have kept us in the same state even now

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.

The world had already changed before September 11. The world has been going through a process of change over the last 20 or 30 years. A civilization ends, another one begins.

When you talk about change, you know what makes it really tough for people is on the one hand you've got tradition, and on the other hand you've got change; in many people's mind, change equals modernization. Tradition, however. I'm a big tradition guy.

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.

We are no more content to plod along the beaten paths - and so marriage must go the way of God.

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

The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.

The civilized world is far ahead of us. We have no choice but to catch up.

Now this problem of the adjustment of man to his natural resources, and the problem of how such things as industrialization and urbanization can be accepted without destroying the traditional values of civilization and corrupting the inner vitality of its life—these things are not only problems of America; they are the problems of men everywhere.

I fear that some day or another we shall have in Europe a total upsetting of social order, which will drive all wise and experienced men to America.

We must get on the train to modernism …. Bring the Arab citizen closer to modernity.

What was good enough for my father is good enough for me" is a treasured English axiom which, if strictly carried out, would have kept us to wooden ploughs and water clocks. In these days we need to be inoculated with some of the nervous energy of the Americans.

… modern civilization … enables us to cure sickness on a huge scale and to destroy each other on a huge scale. It enables us to liberate each other on a huge scale and to tyrannize each other on a huge scale…. There is no evidence of any continuous upward line of social progress

We are living in the jet-age, but we are governed by an Edwardian establishment mentality.

It has become impossible to deny or obscure the great chasm . . . between an elite that seizes modernity’s choicest fruits while disdaining older truths and uprooted masses, who, on finding themselves cheated of the same fruits, recoil into cultural supremacism, populism and rancorous brutality.

I think it's easy to hold on to this romantic hope that communities such as Niaqornat won't change, because we're in this world where progress is unstoppable, and they're a link to some idealised past.

I think a lot of things have become associated with the Right. For example, an unapologetic commitment to progress and modernity is now almost always associated with neo-conservatism whereas it traditionally used to be associated with left-wing thinking and moving society forward.

The world is rapidly changing - and with it, we face new global challenges.

In this post-industrial society, when we're moving away from what was the norm, we have to deal with what it has left in its wake in terms of the impact on people and the environment.

Someone needs to drag you kicking and screaming into this century.

The people of Iran have been battling against consecutive conflicts between tradition and modernity for over 100 years... some have tried and are trying to see the world through the eyes of their predecessors and to deal with the problems and difficulties of the existing world by virtue of the values of the ancients... many others...seek to go forth in step with world developments and not lag behind the caravan of civilization, development and progress.

You may say that I am just another outdated old man complaining about progress and the changes of time. But, you see, I have well considered that possibility myself, and am prepared o submit to correction by anybody who cares about a community, who can show me how the world is improved by that community's dying.