Francis Fukuyama Quotes

A nation is the same people living in the same place.

The Eurasian union is a project meant to preserve the identities of nations and the historic Eurasian community in the new century, in a new world.

He who would dare to undertake to establish a nation would have to feel himself capable of altering, so to speak, human nature, to transform each individual, who by his very nature is a unique and perfect whole, into a mere part of a greater whole, from which this individual would in a sense receive his life and his being.

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

Nationalism is the most powerful force on earth today.

I believe - and so do most Puerto Ricans - that the ideas that will prevail in the new century will be those similar to the basic principles of commonwealth, of national reaffirmation, and political and economic integration among the peoples of the world.

For 500 years, since European explorers came, Latin American countries had been separated from one another. They had very limited relations. Integration is a prerequisite for independence.

If globalization is a sphere, where each point is equidistant from the centre, then it isn't good because it annuls each of us. But if globalization joins us as a polyhedron where we're all together but conserves the dignity of each ... that's good.

I am against portraying China as the demon of the global community. China has grasped more quickly than other countries what globalization means and what it demands. The country has learned how to use other people's innovations for itself. India, incidentally, is not far behind China in this respect. Both are not nations in the European sense, but rather cultural communities with enormous markets. The challenge of the future is to work out how to deal with that.

Viewed as a means to the end of political freedom, economic arrangements are important because of their effect on the concentration or dispersion of power. The kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other

Our great civilization, here in America and across the civilized world has come upon a moment of reckoning. We've seen it in the United Kingdom, where they voted to liberate themselves from global government and global trade deal, and global immigration deals that have destroyed their sovereignty and have destroyed many of those nations.

We must consider not only why the classical theory of democracy appears to be in contradiction with the observed practice, but also why the many different responses to this observation, though mutually incompatible, all share the belief that democracy is the best form of political organization.

I'm not sure what's going on in Britain. I don't know what's going on in London. Because London is no longer an English city, and that's how they got the Olympics. I mean, they said, "We're the most cosmopolitan city on Earth," but it doesn't feel English.

The United Nations, he told an audience at Harvard University, 'has not been able-nor can it be able-to shape a new world order which events so compellingly demand.' ... The new world order that will answer economic, military, and political problems, he said, 'urgently requires, I believe, that the United States take the leadership among all free peoples to make the underlying concepts and aspirations of national sovereignty truly meaningful through the federal approach.'

What do you expect from a culture and a nation that exerted more of its national will fighting against Disney World and Big Macs than the Nazis?

Are we all clear that we want to build something that can aspire to be a world power? In other words, not just a trading bloc but a political entity. Do we realise that our nation states, taken individually, would find it far more difficult to assert their existence and their identity on the world stage.

The Golden Straitjacket is the defining political-economic garment of globalization. [...] The tighter you wear it, the more gold it produces.

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.

I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language-religion-government-blood-identity in these makes men of one country.

Canadians and Americans may look alike, but the contents of their heads are quite different. Americans experience themselves, individually, as small toads in the biggest and most powerful puddle in the world. Their sense of power comes from identifying with the puddle. Canadians as individuals may have more power within the puddle, since there are fewer toads in it; it's the puddle that's seen as powerless.

I don't feel French at all. That was never really a concern, and it's limiting to think that way. I think Paris is more of a playground for international designers, so I don't really feel French. And I don't really want to feel French.

What kind of people do we wish to become, and how do we know an American when we see one? Is it possible to pursue a common purpose without a common history or a standard text?

Erasing national borders does not make people safer or more prosperous. It undermines democracy and trades away prosperity.

Our predecessors understood that the ties that bind America are far stronger than disagreements over any particular policy and far more durable and profound than any party affiliation.

A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man of his bones. But if you break a person's nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again.