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

  45 Copy quote

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

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Development, Upheaval, Poverty

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  7 Copy quote

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

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Individual, Mass

  3 Copy quote

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

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Moral, Easy, Perfectionist

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

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

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Strong, Government, Terrorism

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  3 Copy quote

• Media organizations are global. They may be based in the U.S., but they're essentially global.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  Media, Organization, May

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• What Americans cant face is that one of the reasons that the Russians and the Chinese were so impressed with us during the Cold War was the fact that Nixon and Kissinger went on bombing despite public reaction.

  Robert D. Kaplan

  War, Chinese, Faces

  4 Copy quote

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

  Robert D. Kaplan

  September 11, Stuff, Happened

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Robert S. Kaplan

George Friedman

Thomas Friedman

Robert Kagan

Francis Fukuyama

Zbigniew Brzezinski

John Mearsheimer

Samuel P. Huntington