Governed, as we are, entirely by public opinion, the utmost care should be taken to preserve the purity of the public mind. Knowledge is power, and truth is knowledge; whoever, therefore, knowingly propagates a prejudice, willfully saps the foundation of his country’s strength.
Who knows how many ... people in this world still think they are being threatened by some conspiracy? Here's a form to be filled out at will, by each person with his own conspiracy.... What does everyone desire, and desire more fervently the more wretched and unfortunate they are? To earn money easily, to have power (the enormous pleasure in commanding and humiliating your fellow man) and to avenge every wrong suffered (everyone in life has suffered at least one wrong, however small it might be).... But why; everybody asks, am I not blessed by fortune (or at least not as blessed as I would like to be)? Why have I not been favored like others who are less deserving? No one believes their misfortunes are attributable to any shortcomings of their own; that is why they must find a culprit..... [T]he explanation for their failure. It was some one else... who planned your ruin.
Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery
Global markets suffer from weak governance and are therefore prone to instability, inefficiency, and weak popular legitimacy…. If you want more and better markets, you have to have more (and better) governance. Markets work best not where states are weakest, but where they are strong.... Even though it is possible to advance both democracy and globalization…this requires the creation of a global political community that is vastly more ambitious than anything we have seen to date or are likely to experience soon. It would call for global rule making by democracy…. Democracies have the right to protect their social arrangements, and when this right clashes with the requirements of the global economy, it is the latter that should give way.
Dani Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy
It rarely paid to frighten people but it never paid to confuse them.
Lifted & spun a bit from Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata
