Robert D. Kaplan Quotes

• Travel is like a good challenging book: It demands presentness-the ability to live completely in the moment.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Book, Challenges, Demand

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• It is development, not poverty, that causes upheaval and terrorism.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Development, Upheaval, Poverty

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• It is time to understand the environment for what it is: the national security issue of the early twenty-first century.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Future, Issues, Twenties

  Robert D. Kaplan (2002). “The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War”, p.19, Vintage

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• A lot of the changes are so gradual that they don't even qualify as news, or even as interesting: they're so mundane that we just take them for granted. But history shows that it's the mundane changes that are more important than the dramatic 'newsworthy' events.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Interesting, Important, Events

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• If you look at the history of the U.S., we were an empire long before we were a nation.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Long, Looks, Empires

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• Wherever you have weakening states and turmoil, you will have a fertile petri dish for terrorism.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Terrorism, States, Dishes

  Interview with Katie Bacon, www.theatlantic.com. November 02, 2001.

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• It is a cliche these days to observe that the United States now possesses a global empire - different from Britain's and Rome's but an empire nonetheless.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Rome, America, United States

  "Islam versus the West". Interview with Amanda Griscom-Little, www.rollingstone.com. August 7, 2003.

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• The masses cannot ultimately be free: only the individual can be.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Individual, Mass

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• It is easy to be a moral perfectionist when one is politically unaccountable.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Moral, Easy, Perfectionist

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• The first thing to recognize not just about Afghanistan but about any poor undeveloped country is that as big as it looks on the map, it's much bigger when you're there.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Country, Looks, Maps

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• What does the earth look like in the places where people commit atrocities? Is there a bad smell, a genius loci, something about the landscape that might incriminate?

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Smell, People, Atrocities

  Robert D. Kaplan (2014). “Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History”, p.51, Picador

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• While the foreign policy elite in Washington focuses on the 8,000 deaths in a conflict in Syria – half a world away from the United States – more than 47,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006 in Mexico. A deeply troubled state as well as a demographic and economic giant on the United States’ southern border, Mexico will affect America’s destiny in coming decades more than any state or combination of states in the Middle East.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Destiny, America, People

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• The more dynamic the capitalistic expansion, the greater the disparity. It is from the disparity that we are going to get all the political upheaval for the next few years.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Years, Political, Expansion

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• Bismarck's genius, as well as his great flaw, was the same as that of another outstanding nineteenth-century politician of the German-speaking world, Prince Clemens Metternich. Both men were artificers, able to hold off the future by building a fragile present out of pieces of the past.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Past, Men, Genius

  Robert D. Kaplan (2014). “Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History”, p.54, Picador

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• We talk a lot about individual rights, but in fact Americans are very willing to give up our individual rights if it means our property values will be protected, and so on.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Giving Up, Mean, Rights

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• Prostitution, black marketeering, and informing on ones neighbors and friends all had such a deep-rooted tradition in Romania that there was a charming naturalness and innocence about it.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Black, Neighbors And Friends, Innocence

  Robert D. Kaplan (2014). “Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History”, p.81, Picador

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• What happened on September 11th is at least, theoretically, small stuff compared to what can happen.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  September 11, Stuff, Happened

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• An idea is only an idea if it causes unease, debate and reflection. By that standard, Thomas Homer-Dixon's concept of an 'ingenuity gap' is truly a new idea. I can think of no other new concept that so fully condenses all of the challenges we face as a human civilization than the 'ingenuity gap'. Homer-Dixon has found a way to unite all of our concerns about economics, war, population growth, complexity, etc. under a single heading. He is one of an elite group of academics who can write for a mass audience.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  War, Writing, Reflection

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• Terrorism can go anywhere where there is not strong government, or government that cannot control its hinterlands.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Strong, Government, Terrorism

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• The most important thing I learned as a foreign correspondent in about 80 countries is that it takes a very shallow knowledge of history to think that there are solutions to most problems.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Country, Thinking, Important

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• The Cold War went on for so long that it bred a kind of worldwide military establishment. Even when budgets went down in the early and mid-nineties, it didn't really affect it.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Military, War, Long

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• Americans are opting out of public venues like the playground and the sidewalk for private venues like the healthclub and the mall. We're living our lives inside one form of corporation or another.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Corporations, Form, Malls

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• The United States is not overdeployed or overextended with deployments in 150 countries on any given year. On any given week we have about 65 deployments.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Country, Years, Deployment

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• Given the level of anti-Americanism in the world, given the level of frustration with the United States throughout the Muslim world, you've got a homegrown attack or you have a nuclear explosion in the air that is not a test somewhere. Those are still the biggest threats out there.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Frustration, Air, United States

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• If you travel around America you see different sections of highways donated by this or that person, and that's a slow beginning of what may end up being a situation common in the Third World: some sections of highways in wealthy areas are beautifully maintained and other parts are just dirt-strewn potholes.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  America, Different, World

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