David Korten Quotes

I am probably not alone in sensing above me the huge corporations and monstrous banks, science, politics and technologies, spy satellites and stock markets, military systems and massive wealth - forces and dynamics I don't understand or can hardly imagine.

We must take care that globalization does not become something people become afraid of.

For when we talk about the spreading power and influence of globalization, aren't we really referring to the spreading economic and military might of the US?

Commerce changes the fate and genius of nations.

The global triumph of American technology has been predicated on the implicit separation between the business interests of Silicon Valley and the political interests of Washington.

Let's face it: we live at a time when government is less and less powerful, less and less effective, and the agent of social change, at least for the immediate future, is the corporation.

The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it.

As all Americans head forward into the new reality globalization has created, they want leaders who will level with them and help level the playing field.

I think the implications for the rise of China are huge in terms of the political landscape, economic balance, de-velopment thinking, and the environment.

When I came to the Senate in 1997, the world was being redefined by forces no single country controlled or understood. The implosion of the Soviet Union and a historic diffusion of economic and geopolitical power created new influences and established new global power centers - and new threats.

And that's why I wrote the book, because our country really needs to understand, if people in this nation understood what our foreign policy is really about, what foreign aid is about, how our corporations work, where our tax money goes, I know we will demand change.

What we need is to think strategically about development, analyzing a country's potential role in its region and the world in search of opportunities for growth. Platforms like the Global Social Business Summit can facilitate the process on bringing about change.

For me, the future isn't coming from the USA, like it was before.

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?

Many will see [globalization] as little more than a mask used by certain economic elites for taking away the voice of the individual citizen.

[Reporting on America:] It's progressive growth ... before the century has elapsed will have changed the ... colonial system of the universe and the relative position of all civilized society.

There is no single sustainable model for national success. … the American model, which has indeed been successful, is not available to others, because our success depends greatly on our dominant position at the center of the global capitalist system, and we are not willing to yield it.

Geography determines social development …. But geography may be losing much of its meaning.

The trends that are shaping the twenty-first-century world embody both promise and peril. Globalization, for example, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while contributing to social fragmentation and a massive increase in inequality, not to mention serious environmental damage.

I think I'm a critic of corporate power, whether locally or globally. And the term 'globalization' I've never found all that helpful.

The 21st century can and must be an American century. It began with terror, war, and economic calamity. It is our duty to steer it onto the path of freedom, peace, and prosperity.

We really need a public-interest government that is not taking marching orders from the fossil-fuel industry and the banks and the war profiteers. We really need a government that is acting on our behalf.

Because of my politics, I don't necessarily think that the independent capitalist is that much better than the multinational capitalist; it's just that the independent capitalist hasn't grown as big yet.

We are a G20 country. One of the biggest world economies. We're in the middle of three continents. Changing Saudi Arabia for the better means helping the region and changing the world. So this is what we are trying to do here. And we hope we get support from everyone.

How we live our lives in the Western world has impacts on the rest of the world.