Francis Fukuyama Quotes

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

For capitalism flourishes best in a mobile and egalitarian society

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.

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.