A Chronicle of Crisis

don’t measure your success by the numbers of enemies killed, but by the quantity of friends, admirers and allies you’ve managed to summon, acquire and/or reassure.

it is safer when people fear you than when they love you

And let me add: the choice between the public and the private is slipping out of people’s hands, with the people’s enthusiastic cooperation and deafening applause

Everything private is now done, potentially, in public – and is potentially available to public consumption

Or perhaps we just consent to the loss of privacy as a reasonable price for the wonders offered in exchange.

Against being spied on, there will be no shelter

it is the market that defines our choices and isolates us, ensuring that none of us questions how those choices are defined

The fate of nations is determined by the minds of their intelligentsia

The message is simplicity itself: this is no longer a land of opportunity; this is a land for people with gumption.

Amartya Sen asserts, is all too obvious: if you want to correctly evaluate the severity of the current global crisis, examine ‘what is happening to the lives of human beings, especially the less privileged people – their well-being and their freedom to lead decent human lives’.