Francis Fukuyama Quotations

I've always had a Marxist understanding of history: democracy is a result of a broad modernization process that happens in every country. Neocons think the use of political power can force the pace of change, but ultimately it depends on societies doing it themselves.

I'm basically an optimist because I do think there's this historical modernisation process, and by and large it's been very beneficial to people. But there are blips. History doesn't proceed in a linear way.

I've figured out in the course of my life that the one thing I'm good at doing is writing books, and it would be crazy to trade that in for something else.

The rationale for tenure is still valid. But the system has turned the academy into one of the most conservative and costly institutions in the country. Yes, conservative: Economists joke that their discipline advances one funeral at a time, but many fields must wait for wholesale generational turnover before new approaches take hold.

In general, Americans are not very good at nation-building and not very good colonialists.

I'm a tenured professor. But I'd get rid of tenure.

President Bush has made some statements suggesting the US would accept whatever democratic outcome comes. Should the US be willing to do that, it suggests a major change in their position. But I think it is a little premature to assume that any real decision has been made. I think what they -- in the US administration -- are hoping for is a more gradual reform process in the Arab world, a more gradual expansion of political participation which Islamist groups do not use as an opportunity to come to power. So while I think there has been a shift in the US Middle East policy we will all have to wait to see how great that shift has been.

We wanted our own magazine, ... I don't think they copyrighted the word 'Interest.'

There is, ... no single global strategy that works in terms of democratic openness. Sometimes it happens from the bottom up and sometimes it happens from the up down, and to be successful it usually has to work in both ways. There has to be elite that wants change, though that desire can be supported and driven by popular participation. For example in Chile, the Philippines and Korea it required pressure on leaders on top to open up their systems and those pressures couldn't have come only from civil society. In Ukraine and Georgia on the other hand there was obviously a big push from below -- pressure in both directions is necessary. There is not one single strategy that produces democratic transition.

Fixing the Middle East is only part of the problem. It is a West European problem, too.

the totality of U.S. military interventions have not left lasting, meaningful democratic institutions.

The one curious thing - I don't know quite where he stands right now is - he really was not a neoconservative in a way, and in fact I think he's tried to deny he was a neoconservative, if you go back to all the debates of the 1990's.

It's easy to misunderstand and abuse the role of culture,

Be afraid of the Chinese. I mean, the Chinese shoot down satellites in space; they hack into Google's computers; the Osama bin Laden people can't make their underwear blow up.

The passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and then from the Soviet Union will mean its death as a living ideology ... . For while there may be some isolated true believers left in places like Managua, Pyongyang, or Cambridge, MA ...

For capitalism flourishes best in a mobile and egalitarian society

As a piece of travel literature alone, 'The Ends of the Earth' succeeds in providing a tangible sense of the sweaty, smelly reality of many exotic points on the map, with glimpses of their cruelty but also, occasionally, of beauty and human kindness. As a piece of analysis, it is deeply thought-provoking.

Neoclassical economics ... has uncovered important truths about the nature of money and markets because its fundamental model of rational self-interested human behavior is correct about 80% of the time.

In the future the optimal form of industrial organization will be neither small companies nor large ones but network structures that share the advantages of both.

If networks are to be more efficient...this will come about only on the basis of a high level of trust and the existence of shared norms of ethical behavior between network members

The desire for economic prosperity is itself not culturally determined but almost universally shared

To truly esteem oneself means that one must be capable of feeling shame or self-disgust when one does not live up to a certain standard

Economic activity is carried out by individuals in organisations that require a high degree of social co-operation

What Asia's postwar economic miracle demonstrates is that capitalism is a path toward economic development that is potentially available to all countries. No underdeveloped country in the Third World is disadvantaged simply because it began the growth process later than Europe, nor are the established industrial powers capable of blocking the development of a latecomer, provided that country plays by the rules of economic liberalism.

It was the slave's continuing desire for recognition that was the motor which propelled history forward, not the idle complacency and unchanging self-identity of the master

If people who have to work together in an enterprise trust one another it is because they are all operating to a common set of ethical norms....such a society will be better able to innovate...since the high degree of trust will permit a wide variety of social relationships to emerge...

China is never going to be a global model. Western system is really broken in some fundamental ways, but the Chinese system is not going to work either. It is a deeply unfair and immoral system where everything can be taken away from anyone in a split second.

The nation will continue to be a central pole of identification, even if more and more nations come to share common economic and political forms of organization.

These aren't two separate problems. In many instances the responses are the same.

The doctrine as a whole needs to be... revised.