Abdullah II of Jordan Quotes

Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.

Afghan society is very complex, and Afghanistan has a very complex culture. Part of the reason it has remained unknown is because of this complexity.

The challenge of Mosul and Nineveh is the considerable number of ethnic groups, religious sects, tribes, and other elements that make up the province.

All of my work has been about ideas of utopia and dystopia. I think that's what gives America interest. It's many things all at once. It's such a complicated society.

Loyalism, or Unionism, or Protestantism, or whatever you want to call it, in Northern Ireland - it operates not as a class system, but a caste system.

The characters in 'Be Near Me' come from a genuine place, a Britain that is more than one country and more than one ideal.

Jerusalem is a time bomb that I fear is just waiting to go off.

Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.

I'm a product of a fragmented world.

In community people remain essentially united in spite of all separating factors, while in society they are essentially separated in spite of all uniting factors.

As we used to say when I was privileged to be the commander there, Nineveh province has the most diverse human terrain in all of Iraq - Sunni Arab majority to be sure, but also Shia Arabs, numerous Kurdish communities, and they are broken out into several different political parties.

The Afghans themselves say that if you put two Afghans in a room, you get three factions.

… modern civilization … enables us to cure sickness on a huge scale and to destroy each other on a huge scale. It enables us to liberate each other on a huge scale and to tyrannize each other on a huge scale…. There is no evidence of any continuous upward line of social progress

Syria: It’s a messy civil war and we should not be involved in it.

What images do we see from the rest of the world? We see natural disasters, war, terror. We see refugees, and we see horrible diseases. Right? We see beautiful beaches, cute animals, beautiful nature, cultural rites and stuff. And then we're supposed to make the connection in our head and create a worldview out of this. And how is that possible?

I've been mayor of the city of Jerusalem, which is perhaps, in some ways, more complex and more difficult than a ministerial position.

It's astounding the degree to which these communities are intermarried. Iraq is a crazy quilt of ethnicities and religious sects.

Ethno-sectarian violence is a particular concern in Iraq, as it is a cancer that continues to spread if left unchecked.

Many problems are so complex that even if we had the money to fix them, we wouldn't know how to do it. Fixing inner-city schools, reducing obesity, creating peace in the Middle East are just a few examples.

I think it's totally possible and plausible that racial balkanization is a recurring aspect of the nature of human politics.

Multicultural societies are multi-conflict societies.

The deep problems that afflict the Middle East are not easy to fix, but they must be dealt with if we are not to see a son of ISIS, or even a grandson of ISIS, developing in the years to come.

It is scarcely a mark of intellectual profundity to have noticed that our society is big.

Harlem for me is Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Washington, D.C., in one place. You have very significant churches that have had national ramifications. At the same time, you have politics. On top of all that, you have entertainment because you have 70 years of music that came out of here, and if you scratch that, gangsterism happens.

Neither the Christian attitude of love for all mankind nor humane hopes for an organized society must cause us to forget that the 'human stratum' may not be homogeneous.