Evan Osnos Quotes

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.

The use of refined petroleum as fuel, which began in the 1850s, freed hundreds of millions of people from the toil of centuries, gave hundreds of millions more a life of ease and plenty, and, by allowing great cities to feed themselves from every corner of the world, multiplied the population of the earth fivefold.

When I was a student there in the mid-1990s, they had just created the weekend; depth and individuality were slowly returning after the austere, colorless low of the 1970s. When I returned to live in China from 2005 to 2013, the country was building everything anew.

The period after the First World War was an extremely different time, so that Sherlock Holmes would have been a different person following 1918 than he was during the Victorian era.

Industrialization, by drawing people from the countryside to the cities brings with it the weakening of traditional political and social support systems.

Technology is often not a prime mover but a second-order consequence of food surpluses, urbanization, secularism, political stability ... and other conditions that create a fertile climate for innovation.

China's rise is really a kind of a world historical event. This is the largest country in the world. It has caused a wholesale substantial contraction of U.S. manufacturing employment.

You have a huge demographic shift that's happening in America. Globally.

What has happened in the last generation is that Tijuana has become a new Third World capital - much to the chagrin of Mexico City, which is more and more aware of how little it controls Tijuana politically and culturally. In addition to whorehouses and discos, Tijuana now has Korean factories and Japanese industrialists and Central American refugees, and a new Mexican bourgeoisie that takes its lessons from cable television.

UTC is very well positioned to take advantage of 2 large megatrends: urbanization and the fast-growing commercial aerospace market.

I'm suggesting that, ironically, the secret to becoming a world 'hyperpower' is tolerance. If you look at history, you see great powers being very tolerant in their rise to global dominance.

Though the general principles of statecraft have survived the rise and fall of empires, every increase in knowledge has brought about changes in the political, economic, and social structure.

After World War II society had to settle back for a moment before it picked up the 20th century.

Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, Atlanta: those are all cities that really didn't get big, didn't hit their stride until the 20th century.

I had great admiration for the election of President Obama. I believe that the U.S. at that moment showed tremendous capacity to show that it is a great nation, and it surprised the world. It may be very difficult to be able to elect a black president in the U.S. - as it was very difficult to elect a woman president in Brazil.

I think the rise of China is one of the great events of all economic and human history, and I think this will be overwhelmingly a positive thing for the region and the world.

The human family is at a critical juncture. The world is moving through a great transition. This transition is economic, as the digital revolution advances and as new powers and groups emerge.

In 1991, the government unleashed the power of India and created a partnership between itself and industry. As a result, India has emerged as an economic success story, and that is a matter of pride for all of us.

The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words, there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.

Since 1948 I have spent every single day thinking how the economic and political worlds have changed.

There certainly have been a lot of changes, although they come in such gradations that most people have either forgotten, or, if they're too young, they never knew about them in the first place.

In the past Berlin was much more radical and extreme and now it's becoming much more of a conventional European city.

Asian literature is evolving with the people. It's always a reflection on what's happening to the culture at large.

People are becoming more and more aware of how the dominance of development and business is altering their lives and, in particular, their own heritage.

Its highest point was The Worst Journey in the World. Then you see this decline, and this harking back, using the 19th-century form when we're not in the 19th century. That way of writing a book about the world out there - you just can't do it anymore.