Fareed Zakaria Quotations

In the 1990s, we were certain that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arsenal. In fact, his factories could barely make soap.

The tallest building in the world is now in Dubai, the biggest factory in the world is in China, the largest oil refinery is in India, the largest investment fund in the world is in Abu Dhabi, the largest Ferris wheel in the world is in Singapore.

Americans have so far put up with inequality because they felt they could change their status. They didn't mind others being rich, as long as they had a path to move up as well. The American Dream is all about social mobility in a sense - the idea that anyone can make it.

I should not be judged by a standard that's not applied to everyone else.

The United States is going to be a rich country, it is going to be prosperous, but it is not going to be able to take the lead in the next phase of global economic development.

What we see today is an American economy that has boomed because of policies and developments of the 1950s and '60s: the interstate-highway system, massive funding for science and technology, a public-education system that was the envy of the world and generous immigration policies.

When you're failing, there's a very powerful incentive to put ideology aside and just do what seems to work.

The Berlin Wall wasn't the only barrier to fall after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Traditional barriers to the flow of money, trade, people and ideas also fell.

Politics and power is a realm of relative influence,

The technological revolution at home makes it much easier for computers to do our work.

During the Cold War, we were interested because we were scared that Russia and the United States were going to go to war. We were scared that Russia was going to take over the world. Every country became a battleground.

In a very weak economy, when you say 'cut government spending,' what you mean is you're laying off school teachers and you're de-funding various programs that put money into the economy. This means you have more unemployed people that then draw unemployment benefits and don't pay taxes.

I don't want to paint a picture of total gloom and doom.

It is absolutely clear that government plays a key role, as a catalyst, in promoting long-run growth.

In a world awash in debt, power shifts to creditors.

Street protests in Saudi Arabia might warm our hearts, but they could easily lead to $250 a barrel oil and a global recession.

But as the arms-control scholar Thomas Schelling once noted, two things are very expensive in international life: promises when they succeed and threats when they fail.

I grew up in this world where everything seemed possible.

Whenever someone says the word community, I want to reach for an oxygen mask.

There is very strong historical data that suggests the way societies grow is by making large, long-term investments.

If a senator calls me up and asks me what should we do in Iraq, I'm happy to talk to him.

America's growth historically has been fueled mostly by investment, education, productivity, innovation and immigration. The one thing that doesn't seem to have anything to do with America's growth rate is a brutal work schedule.

If we didn't have the rest of the world growing, the United States economy would be in much worse shape than it is today.

One of the great dilemmas for America will be that American companies will do very well while American workers might not.

Conservatives used to believe in confronting hard truths, not succumbing to comforting fairy tales. Some still do.

The American dream seems to be thriving in Europe not at home.

The Web forces me to be disciplined and not to waste time - but before the Web was invented, there were plenty of opportunities to do that anyway.

The American consumer, even today, the weight of the American consumer in the global economy is China plus India doubled. So, it's tough to replace that.

I am an American, not by accident of birth but by choice. I voted with my feet and became an American because I love this country and think it is exceptional.

I very much want to be in the business of creating content, of doing stories all over the world rather than figuring out what the business model is for 'Newsweek' on the iPad, although that's very important work as well.

If you go to India the roads are being built almost entirely with private sector money and by the private sector. If you look at many, many countries in Europe that's how they're doing it.

One of the things that has been very difficult in Libya is the sense of uncertainty - the sense that they haven't actually finished the revolution, that there was still a great deal of uncertainty. That uncertainty has made Libya harder for business in terms of oil and other things as well.

What happens in the media is the cult of personality. The brands who have been forced to cut their staff have been forced to take on the brands of journalists.

Iran is a country of 80 million people, educated and dynamic. It sits astride a crucial part of the world. It cannot be sanctioned and pressed down forever. It is the last great civilization to sit outside the global order.

I think that liberals need to grow up.

Things happening around the world are affecting you and me.

American influence is not what it used to be.

Having your fiscal house in order and having a more manageable macro-economic future is going to be very useful in creating growth.

I enjoy writing but I much prefer the experience of having written.

I think it is quite untrue that it is standard journalistic practice to name the interviewer when quoting from an interview.

I'd be kidding if I said that I predicted the financial collapse.

It hasn't been easy to find American citizens who are willing to pick fruit in 110 degree weather.

It's not possible for two countries to be the leading dominant political power at the same time.

My friends all say I'm going to be Secretary of State. But I don't see how that would be much different from the job I have now.

The Chinese economy's still not that much of a consumer economy.

The great drama of Russian history has been between its state and society. Put simply, Russia has always had too much state and not enough society.

The markets are much more interested in America's long-term trajectory than they are in feeling that there is an acute short-term crisis.

The people who watch Fox are not going to watch CNN. You know, lets be honest.

The situation in Syria is quite different from Libya.

There is a huge crisis of employment in America, in the Western world in general.

Whenever societies do well, they believe that there is something in their cultural DNA that made it happen.

You know, when the cost of capital goes down, when credit becomes cheap, people start taking greater and greater risks.

CNN is getting smarter, and you can feel it in the stories, you can feel it in the depth with which they're covered, the kinds of people in terms of guests who are brought on air, the way in which issues are discussed.

The one show that I will continue to be a guest on is 'The Daily Show' with Jon Stewart, if he'll have me. It's not competitive with CNN and it's too much fun.

Some of these forces have gained strength because of a lack of other alternatives. For decades the Middle East has been a political desert. . . . In much of the Muslim world Islam became the language of political opposition because it was the only language that could not be censored. This pattern, of dictators using religious groups to destroy the secular opposition, has played out in virtually every Arab country.

which is not to pick sides but to explain what I think is happening on the ground. I can't say, 'This is my team and I'm going to root for them no matter what they do.'

The big difference is that Bush appears to view foreign policy from the pragmatic, problem-solving perspective and Gore has a somewhat messianic approach. He wants to do sweeping things that will change the world in one fell swoop.

If there is one lesson for U.S. foreign policy from the past 10 years, it is surely that military intervention can seem simple but is in fact a complex affair with the potential for unintended consequences.

I occasionally find myself reluctant to be pulled into a world that's not mine, in the sense that I'm not a religious guy.

Intelligence is called the world's second oldest profession for a reason. Everyone does it.

But now, we are becoming suspicious of the very things we have long celebrated - free markets, trade, immigration, and technological change. And all this is happening when the tide is going our way. Just as the world is opening up, America is closing down.

Foreign policy commands attention when it's crisis management. A street revolt breaks out in Egypt or Libya or Kiev and everyone asks, how should the president respond? Now these are important parts of America's role in the world, but they are essentially reactive and tactical. The broader challenge is to lay down a longer-term strategy that endures after the crisis of the moment.

No successful political transition can take place without leaders and movements that demand and press for freedom.

I'm largely in favor of financial reform.

France placed the state above society , democracy above constitutionalism, and equality above liberty. As a result, for much of the nineteenth century it was democratic, with broad suffrage and elections, but hardly liberal. it was certainly a less secure home for individual freedom than was England or America.

California has often led the country, indeed the world, in the technology, consumption, trends, lifestyles, and of course, mass entertainment. It is where the car found its earliest and fullest expression, where suburbs blossomed, where going to gym replaced going to church, where forces that lead so many to assume that direct democracy is the wave of the future - declining political parties, telecommuting, new technology, the internet generation 0 are all most well developed in this vast land.

The tallest building in the world is now in Dubai...

Politically Incorrect was the name of the show Bill Maher hosted in the 1990s. It's also an apt description of the man himself. Now host of - HBO's hit show Real Time, I find Maher to be one of the sharpest observers of American politics and life in general out there. It doesn't mean I always agree with him. I always find him funny, though.

There is very strong historical data that suggest the way societies grow is by making large, long-term investments.

My friends all say I’m going to be Secretary of State, [but] I don’t see how that would be much different from the job I have now

Media reporters have pointed out that the paragraphs in my Time column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore's essay in the April 22nd issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at Time, and to my readers.

It's really difficult to have your voice heard and feared when you both speak softly and carry a twig.

As the United States continues its slow but steady recovery from the depths of the financial crisis, nobody actually wants a massive austerity package to shock the economy back into recession, and so the odds have always been high that the game of budgetary chicken will stop short of disaster. Looming past the cliff, however, is a deep chasm that poses a much greater challenge -- the retooling of the country's economy, society, and government necessary for the United States to perform effectively in the twenty-first century.

We all accuse Vladimir Putin of Cold War nostalgia, but Washington's elites - politicians and intellectuals - miss the old days as well. They wish for the world in which the United States was utterly dominant over its friends, its foes were to be shunned entirely, and the challenges were stark, moral, and vital. Today's world is messy and complicated. China is one of our biggest trading partners and our looming geopolitical rival. Russia is a surly spoiler, but it has a globalized middle class and has created ties in Europe.

Some have said that the clash between Catholicism and Protestantism illustrates the old maxim that religious freedom is the product of two equally pernicious fanaticisms, each cancelling the other out.

Germany is a fascinating role model. The Germans have maintained their manufacturing edge despite being a high-tax, high-regulation economy. Why? Because the government really set about ensuring that it maintained funding for technical training, technical advancements and programs. It made a concerted effort to retain high-end, complex manufacturing -- the kind of BMW model, if you will. And they've done that so successfully that Germany, which has a quarter of America's population, exports more than America does.

If envy were the cause of terrorism, Beverly Hills [and] Fifth Avenue ... would have become targets long ago.

America washes its dirty linen in public. When scandals such as this one hit, they do sully America's image in the world. But what usually also gets broadcast around the world is the vivid reality that the United States forces accountability and punishes wrongdoing, even at the highest levels.

Strip away the usual hot air, and bin Laden's audiotape is the sign of a seriously weakened man.

Alaska itself is an unusual state.

...foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology.

It all looks American because America, the country that invented mass capitalism and consumerism, got there first. the impact of mass capitalism is now universal.

The United States needs serious change in its fiscal, entitlement, infrastructure, immigration, and education policies, among others. And yet a polarized and often paralyzed Washington has pushed dealing with these problems off into the future, which will only make them more difficult and expensive to solve.

Legitimacy is the elixir of political power.

We have the leading companies and the leading sectors in the advanced industrial world, we have an incredibly dynamic society, and we have high levels of entrepreneurship. And we have the best universities in the world. ... We also have impeccable credit. What we don't have is a political system that can take the simple measures to deal with our short-term deficit.

A nation's path to greatness lies in its economic prowess and ... militarism, empire, and aggression lead to a dead end.

The twentieth century was marked by two broad trends: the regulation of capitalism and the deregulation of democracy. Both experiments overreached.

Intriguingly, in poll after poll, when Americans are asked what public institutions they most respect, three bodies are always at the top of their list: the Supreme Court, the armed forces, and the Federal Reserve System. All three have one thing in common: they are insulated from the public pressures and operate undemocratically. It would seem that Americans admire these institutions, precisely because they lead rather than follow.

On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq, [Bush's] assumptions and policies have been wrong. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw.

If you listen to the political discourse in America today, you would think that all our problems have been caused by the Mexicans of the Chinese or the Muslims. The reality is that we have caused our own problems. Whatever has happened has been caused by isolating ourselves or blaming others.

The problem is that Islam does not have a pope, so there's no one guy to say, 'This isn't kosher'...Not that he would.

It is likely that human beings will find fulfillment and will be rewarded for the same qualities that they have been rewarded for for 5,000 years. And that is intelligence, hard work, honesty, a sense of character, loyalty to family and friends, and above all, love and faith. If you are trying to decide what you should do, those are the things you should do. And you know it.

Democracy is also a single ideology, and, like all such templates, it has its limits. what works in a legislature might not work in a corporation.

If there is one lesson for U.S. foreign policy from the past 10 years, it is surely that military intervention can seem simple but is in fact a complex affair with the potential for unintended consequences.

Thanks to the Communist Party of China, we now know the path to poverty alleviation is Capitalism.

Generations from now, when historians write about these times, they might note that, in the early decades of the twenty-first century, the United States succeeded in its great and historic mission--it globalized the world. But along the way, they might write, it forgot to globalize itself.

There is no way to turn off this global economy, nor should one try. Every previous expansion of global capitalism has led to greater prosperity across the world.

Culture follows power.

ISIS is a formidable foe, but the counter forces to it have only just begun and if these forces, the Iraqi army, the Kurdish Peshmerga, American air power, the Syrian Free Army, work in a coordinated fashion, it will start losing ground. Also, please keep in mind that ISIS does not actually hold as much ground as the many maps flashed on television keep showing. Large parts of those territories that ISIS supposedly controls are vacant desert.

Religions are vague, of course. This means that they are easy to follow -you can interpret their prescriptions as you like. but it also means that it is easy to slip up -there is always some injunction you are violating. But Islam has no religious establishment - no popes, no bishops - that can declare by fiat which is the correct interpretation. As a result, the decision to oppose the state on the grounds that is insufficiently Islamic belongs to anyone who wishes to exercise it.