Mohsin Hamid Quotes

We do live, like it or not, in a world that is deeply interdependent. 9-11 proved that even security is something that we cannot achieve by ourselves.

Country [China] needs to continue opening up and keep connecting. It needs to realize that the world has become one. The old concept of isolation, the idea that you can solve your problems on your own does not work anymore - neither in cultural, economic, nor political terms.

Nothing can be controlled by one country today; nothing.

There are no national strategies any longer. There's only national poverty. With the global economy there are only global strategies. We're moving from a world of enemies that are national to a world of global dangers. Can you place boundaries on pollution?

We’re in a globalized world and the risk [of epidemics] is shared..

The age of isolation is gone. And gone are the days in which barbed wire served as demarcation lines, separating and isolating countries from one another. No country can escape looking beyond its boundaries to find the source of the currents which influence how it can live with others.

If you asked me to name the three scariest threats facing the human race, I would give the same answer that most people would: nuclear war, global warming and Windows.

Today, we take the risk of nuclear war quite seriously, climate change not so much and epidemics least of all. But no single country, not even the United States, is well prepared. And even if one country is doing the right things to protect itself, it has to be a global thing.

The human race has entered a stage where we are all dependent on each other. No other country or nation should be regarded in total separation from another, let alone pitted against another.

We're often told that we live in a globalized world, and we talk about it all the time, but people don't stop to think about what it means.

We need to cooperate globally on epidemic preparedness and prevention in the same way we are cooperating globally to stop people from getting nuclear weapons.

For most of mankind, the average person knew what was happening in his own village and the next one, and nothing beyond that, and he didn't care, so that leaders were able to guide their countries almost irrespective of what people really thought because they weren't involved in it. Now, everybody knows what's happening instantaneously.

However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day. I believe that national sovereignties will shrink in the face of universal interdependence. The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: We are all in the same boat.

We no longer live in a bipolar world. The world is interconnected and interdependent. You will have to connect with everybody at the same time. Even if there are two opposing countries, they will have to be friends. Now the times have changed.

But it is the best thing that we have for bringing the countries of Europe around the same table and for forging compromises so that people here can live in peace, freedom and prosperity. In a world which is growing closer together all the time, we can only survive and influence the rules if we join forces. We will miss the presence of the United Kingdom at this table.

The choices we make now will shape the future of not just our countries, but the world at large. We should intensify our cooperation in confronting global challenges like Terrorism, Cyber Security and Climate Change.

Exporters monitor economic and political policies to the developing world, but the consequences of that have been to make developing countries far more sensitive to the constant fluctuations. Developing countries are not always allowed to support their farmers in the same way as the U.S. or Europe is. They're not allowed to have tariff barriers. They're forced, more or less, to shrink their social programs. The very poorest people have fewer and fewer entitlements. The consequence of this has been that there's been a chronic increase in the vulnerability of those economies to price shocks.

Earlier the world was bi polar. Foreign policy would be centered around two super powers. India was a little late in realizing that this bi polar situation was for namesake. Now the entire world, in changed circumstances, especially in 21st century, it is more interdependent and inter connected, earlier, the foreign policy was possible between governments, but today it is not possible just between governments. Government relations are important but increasing people to people contact is equally important. There's been a shift in paradigm.

We are challenged to develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one.

We live in an inter-dependent world. An isolated India is not in our interest. Just because we are a large country, we cannot be arrogant and think that we can ignore others. We live in a different era. Terrorism is global and can come from even remote countries. International summits and organizations like WTO take decisions which will bind us and if we are not present in such summits, we may be hurt by the decisions taken.

We must recognise that in an integrated world, trade cannot be divorced from other concerns. We need to promote free trade and serious global efforts with respect to common problems even as we support every nation's right to chart its own course.

I think any public policy that doesn't account for the fact that most CO2 emissions don't come from the United States, but they come from other countries, is a flawed policy. So let's not unilaterally tax our power, our people, to solve a global problem.

Too often we participate in the globalization of indifference. May we strive instead to live global solidarity.

We often confuse or loosely use the ideas of crony capitalism or neoliberalism to actually avoid using the word "capitalism", but once you've actually seen, let's say, what's happening in India and the United States - that this model of US economics packaged in a carton that says "democracy" is being forced on countries all over the world, militarily if necessary, has in the United States itself resulted in 400 of the richest people owning wealth equivalent [to that] of half of the population.

No man should be viewed as having more to offer the world than another. We are all equals and every human being has something of value in their composition which makes them unique, just as every country has their own unique resources to share with the world. Never discount somebody based on material wealth, for true wealth is what cannot be seen. Never discount a country by what they can't provide your country, while their resources may benefit other lands in need.