Paul Collier Quotes

#1. data. Paul Collier is one of the few who has ventured a recent guess. He recently asked: "Is this dismal performance just an artifact of the data?

Morten Jerven

#2. Poverty is not intrinsically a trap, otherwise we would all still be poor.

Paul Collier

#3. Migration has been politicized before it has been analyzed.

Paul Collier

#4. Only our company and a handful of others are poised to write the future.

Steve Ballmer

#5. Elections determine who is in power, but they do not determine how power is used.

Paul Collier

#6. Most conduct is guided by norms rather than by laws. Norms are voluntary and are effective because they are enforced by peer pressure.

Paul Collier

#7. Change in the societies at the very bottom must come predominantly from within; we cannot impose it on them.

Paul Collier

#8. Eddie Robinson is about one word: winning and losing.

Paul Collier

#9. Theism is a philosophy of non-thinker.

Debasish Mridha

#10. Without an informed electorate, politicians will continue to use the bottom billion merely for photo opportunities, rather than promoting real transformation.

Paul Collier

#11. Not all developing countries are the same.

Paul Collier

#12. Most actors have been fired during their career.

Robert Morse

#13. Launching a turnaround takes courage. I cannot measure that and so it is not going to be included in my analysis, but behind the moments of change there are always a few people within these societies who have decided to try to make a difference.

Paul Collier

#14. You are a citizen, and citizenship carries responsibilities.

Paul Collier

#15. The NSA is the only branch of the government that actually listens to people.

Ziad K. Abdelnour

#16. At the core of all successful societies are procedures for blocking the advancement of bad men

Paul Collier

#17. Do you and I allow light to chase darkness from our souls as well?

Anasazi Foundation

#18. The key obstacle to reforming aid is public opinion.. Public opinion drives them into the "I care" photo opportunities that dominate aid.

Paul Collier

#19. I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, I'm a drinker with a writing problem.

Dorothy Parker

#20. There is a simple way of avoiding excess risk-taking by the managers of our financial institutions. It is to make it a crime ... had a crime for reckless management of a financial institution been on the books, Northern Rock and RBS would not have blown up.

Paul Collier

#21. Sometimes the greatest gift you can give someone who needs comfort is empathy from a heart that understands.

Timothy Pina

#22. Rebels usually have something to complain about, and if they don't they make it up. All too often the really disadvantaged are in no position to rebel; they just suffer quietly.

Paul Collier

#23. How do we give credible hope to the billion poorest people in the world? It requires compassion to get ourselves started, and enlightened self-interest to get serious ... If economic divergence continues, combined with global integration, it will build a nightmare for our children.

Paul Collier

#24. Electorates tend to get the politicians they deserve.

Paul Collier

#25. There is the potential for much more spontaneity with prints than there is with the sculpture, which tends to be very slow, accretive kind of process-labor intensive.

Martin Puryear

#26. I am vehemently grateful that, by whatever means, I learned to assume that loneliness should be in part pleasure, sensitizing and clarifying, and that it is even a truer bond among people than any kind of proximity.

Marilynne Robinson

#27. Politicians would only move beyond gestures once there was a critical mass of informed citizens.

Paul Collier

#28. Pressure works, but it needs to be organized. This is the domain of the NGOs and the rock stars.

Paul Collier

#29. If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.

Timothy Keller

#30. The critical changes in trade policy ... are politically difficult not because they threaten interests (they don't) but because they do not fit into any of the current slogans and so don't make it onto the agenda.

Paul Collier

#31. The aid agencies are not run by fools. they are full of intelligent people severely constrained by what public opinion permits.

Paul Collier

#32. I don't believe in diets. In fact, there is no such thing as a diet. Well-fit individuals were around eons before the word "diet" even existed.

Brett Osborn

#33. Persuading everyone to behave decently to each other because the society is so fragile is a worthy goal, but it may be more straightforward just to make the societies less fragile, which means developing their economies.

Paul Collier

#34. On Tuesday, when it hails and snows,
The feeling on me grows and grows
That hardly anybody knows
If those are these or these are those.

A.A. Milne

#35. In a tavern everybody puts on airs except the landlord.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#36. Within 10 years it will be impossible to travel to the North Pole by dog team. There will be too much open water.

Will Steger

#37. Unlike President Obama, Mitt Romney has been inside the bubble all his life. He has no idea what's going on here. He has no idea how destructive Bush's eight years were to this country.

Stephen Stills