Regional Transformation Quotes

[the war in Iraq] "could have terrifically good effects troughout the Middle East

I believe the democratic transformation in Iraq will lead to change in Middle East.

What the Olympics and other mega-events have shown is that the significant investment required to host an international games successfully has the power to transform a region, and even a nation.

Cities and regions change. It doesn't happen overnight, but diversifying your economy is the only real route.

The nature of the South is changing faster than the stereotypes are. Much of the South now looks like San Jose. Is it still southern?

It's amazing how much progress there's been in China, and also India. Those are the places that really matter - they're half of the world's population. They're the places where things are enormously better now than they were 50 years ago. And I don't see anything that's going to stop that.

We look in our own backyard and say, 'How do we help at-risk families, at risk youth? How do we think through some of the problems affecting the Pacific Northwest and make some change there?'

What our economists call a depressed area almost always turns out to be a cleaner, freer, more livable place than most.

The Caribbean world has changed radically since the 1960s, and postcolonial generations have very different mentalities from those that went before.

It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.

I believe that the Iraqis have an opportunity now, without Saddam Hussein there, to build the first multiconfessional Arab democracy in the Middle East. And that will make for a different kind of Middle East. And these things take time. History has a long arc, not a short one. And there are going to be ups and downs, and it is going to take patience by the United States and by Iraq's neighbors to help the Iraqis to do that. But if they succeed, it'll transform the Middle East, and that's worth doing.