"Some observers feel it is harder to change public opinion in democracies than it is to change policies in totalitarian countries."

Joseph Nye Science See all quotes by Joseph Nye →

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More by Joseph Nye

“Cooperation is difficult in the absence of communication.”

“Power, like love, is easier to experience than to define or measure.”

“The international system consists not only of states. The international political system is the pattern of relationships among the states.”

“Humans sometimes make surprising choices, and human history is full of uncertainties.”

“Any sense of global community is weak.”

“Governments now have to share the stage with actors who can use information to enhance their soft power and press governments directly, or indirectly by mobilizing their publics.”

Resonant Thoughts

"The person you became with her is worth being."

— Veronica Roth

Literature1988

#change

"Suddenly it was all different, what I did had a value that made people ready to pay, up to that time everything I did had a value because nobody was ready to pay. It is funny about money. And it is fu…"

— Gertrude Stein

Literature1874–1946

#knowledge

"We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion."

— Eric Hoffer

Literature1902–1983

#life

"In the affluent world we have had capitalism in one form or another for a couple of centuries. That is how countries of the West became "the affluent world." Capitalism has given people both the liber…"

— Johan Norberg

Economics1973

#freedom