Bill Haslam Quotes

Over the past thirty years Europe’s influence has transformed Cairo. Now…we are civilized.

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

If the United States isn’t keeping pace with the rest of the civilized world, then for its own good it needs to change.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draw all, even the most barbarian of nations into civilization.

We recognize the new order in the world, with the closer contacts which progress has wrought.

Thomas Friedman's 'The World is Flat' sold more copies in India than in the U.K. The market for go-getting business books or wonkish tomes by corporate moguls posing as philosopher kings has grown dramatically in modernising China and India.

For all the social changes in China can be traced to their early beginnings in the days when the new tools or vehicles of commerce and locomotion first brought the Chinese people into unavoidable contact with the strange ways and novel goods of the Western peoples.

The world has gotten smaller and more accessible since I first started writing in the 70's.

China has lunged into the 21st century, while India is still lurching toward it.

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.

Education, particularly higher education, will take Africa into the mainstream of globalization.

I mean, the nation in which we live - and the world in which we live - is so extraordinarily more like a future than the futures that we're being sold on the screen and on television.

I know about technology, about research, scientific applications, culture, civilization, differences between nations of the world, the nature of history.

In many countries, IT is a pillar of growth and attracts a lot more competitive talent.

I always was fascinated with China, because I was born in Europe, and for us, China had this fascination and mystery. The first time I came here was in 1989. They were on bicycles, and the speed of the growth has been incredible.

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.

Like all social theories, internationalism must seek its basis in the economic and technical fields; here are to be found the most profound and the most decisive factors in the development of society.

At the same time, we are keenly aware that China is still the largest developing country in the world and we need to make long and hard efforts if we are to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and basically achieve modernization.

Modernization is found in markets.

… post-industrial society

The world is opening up. We all learn what is happening elsewhere. … The individual is fast becoming aware of his or her rights.

Do you believe that life today is the same as it was 10 centuries ago? This tremendous change was produced by the West. Who else produced it?

My final aim is to bring Iran, within twenty years, to the same level of civilization and progress as will be enjoyed by the most highly developed countries. During the last ten years the degree of our backwardness has been halved, but it is this remaining backwardness which will be the most difficult to combat.

The duty of an American churchman in China is not simply introducing new ideas into the country, but modifying its industrial, social, and political life and institutions. Missionaries are the pioneers of trade and commerce. Civilization, learning, instruction breed new wants which commerce supplies.