Geoff Mulgan Quotes

Politics... have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

What drives the separation of groups of people into subgroups is the desire to control resources. We begin with a single culture, and over time the number of individuals within that culture expands.

Politics is irrational. Politics is about human beings with their frailties and perversions and distortions or perception, who prioritise things according to their conviction.

We seek a logical understanding of mass violence, but war and civil strife rarely explode because of rational grievances. Complaints about oppression, poverty or injustice may serve as superficial catalysts, but few wars can be traced to objective decision-making by the dispassionate leaders of cool-headed populations. War is an act of passion, not of policy.

As racial, economic and national groups, they take for themselves, whatever their power can command.

In my generation, history was taught in terms of grand figures, men on whom the destiny of the nation hinged, quintessential heroes.

There is a presumption made among nationalists that constitutional change is the answer to all the questions that are problematic in our communities, and my job is to talk about what is happening in the real world.

Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.

I don't feel particularly attached to Israel - 'nationalism,' as Noam Chomsky said, 'is not my cup of tea' - but I feel no particular need to demonize it.

The kind of support encouraged by such modes of expression has always arisen basically from confusing the fatherland itself with the social conditions which happened to prevail in it.

For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.

Each generation seems to invent its own reasons for war.

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

That's a mistake I think that a lot of Western observers make is to assume that Korean nationalism is hundreds if not thousands of years old. When in fact nationalism is incompatible with Korean Confucian tradition.

In the end, civil wars are about the distribution of power.

I have lived in Germany and know its language and literature, and the spirit and ideals of its rulers. Having given many years to a study of American capitalism. I am not blind to the defects of my own country; but, in spite of these defects, I assert that the difference between the ruling class of Germany and that of America is the difference between the seventeenth century and the twentieth.

Thus I encountered one of the basic experiences of being an Irish American--the awareness that we had a political tradition that was not entirely admirable. It took quite a lot of time for me to realize it was also a basic American experience--this clash between ideal--in my case inculcated by nuns and Jesuits--and hard realities.

There is a strong propaganda value to history as taught in American Schools

It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round.

Where differences of interest is removed, whimsical and unaccountable factions often arise, from personal favour or enmity.

the latent causes of faction [which causes men] to vex and oppress each other.

The world’s gravest conflicts are not over ethical principles or disputed values but over disputed facts.

Part of why civil wars are so difficult to explain is that so many different reasons are at work in different places.

Vietnam should have taught us that nationalism, with its engines of independence and self-determination, is a more powerful force by far than Marxism and must be understood and respected.