Roberto Unger Quotes

The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.

There was a touch of anxiety in the whole human race about its future.

Mexico urgently needs a series of structural reforms that will detonate its true economic potential and generate more public welfare.

China is still a developing country with a myriad of tasks and challenges.

India has in fact raced ahead, in ways that are more dazzling and more confusing than America is.

I'm reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States - for the century, at least.

Compared to developed countries, or even to some major emerging countries, burdened by aging populations, financial crises, widening budget deficits, faltering faith in politics and growing social demands, Africa has become the world's last 'New Frontier:' a kind of 'it-continent.'

Developing nations want to become developed nations.

I worry about the world.

People often focus on the downsides of population growth but neglect the upsides. These upsides may even outweigh the downsides, making a larger population a good thing overall.

But if USA has 1.3 billion people, USA would have the same human rights problem just like China.

China is doing lots of things right. It's investing in education and R&D, it's opening up, it's more cosmopolitan than it's ever been. I think it's very likely that China will continue to explode economically and certainly become a superpower.

Whatever the scenario, the dynamism of developing nations, their demographics and competitive power are great sources for superiority.

China is a developing country with a huge population, and also a developing country in a crucial stage of reform. In this context, China still faces many challenges in economic and social development. And a lot still needs to be done in China, in terms of human rights.

The future of Africa is in innovative engineering.

Globalisation will make our societies more creative and prosperous, but also more vulnerable.

The notion of 'world leadership' is a curiously archaic one. The very phrase is redolent of Kipling ballads and James Bondian adventures. What makes a country a world leader? Is it population, in which case India is on course to top the charts, overtaking China as the world's most populous country by 2034?

The world that our children will inherit is going to look substantially different, very quickly, than the world we have today. It's alarming.

India is now changing and regaining its lustre, and it is coming of age.

Give us 20 years, and you'll not recognize this country!

One problem in Africa has been a small population. And the natural resources were large. So you could be as foolish as possible. But you didn’t die. You just remained there eating mangoes and bananas. Now the population in Africa is growing. So the idea that you can go on with idiotic policies is not sustainable. Because a big population needs answers.

Populations factors are indeed critical in and often determine and solve violent conflict in developing areas. Religious, social and racial differences, migration, rapid population growth, differential levels of knowledge and skills, rural/urban differences, population pressure and the spatial location of population in relation to resources, in this rough order of importance, all appear to be important contributions to conflict and violence …. Clearly conflicts which are regarded in primarily political terms often have demographic roots …. Where population size is greater than available resources, or is expanding more rapidly than the available resources, there is a tendency toward internal disorders and violence and, sometimes, disruptive international policies or violence.... In developing countries, the burden of population factors, added to others, will weaken unstable governments, often only marginally effective in good times, and open the way to extremist regimes

Development has to rise if population is going to increase, Otherwise people will starve and all kinds of other problems.

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.

We all have to acknowledge a simple fact: Africa is growing.