The Way of the World Quotes

“When a precious secret is collected It tends to glow in the darkness. Placed in daylight, fitted along a wide landscape of fact, it often loses its brilliance.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“Push the needle into some middle range of guarded optimism.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“You can actually herd cats. They can't be forced, of course. But if they sense something they want, if there enticed by something good, they'll follow, even in herds.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“The government of the world's most powerful nation is running furiously in place.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“Disequilibrium is often instigated by the will to power, a sleepless drive in the human personality to control others, to force them to do what one wants, or not to do what one opposes.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“Religions find lasting utility in terms of prescription or parameter, rules for the conduct of human affairs.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“Those two great genies of wishful fulfillment – messianic fervor and technological power – have spotted each other. If they come together, the world, as it is now known, will no longer exist.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“Public servants in this Europe often do their best when they stop caring about whether they'll be fired.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“Security is by far the city's predominant business.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“In his book The Soul of Black Folks, W.E.B. DuBois writes about always feeling "his twoness-- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; to warring ideals in one dark body.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“This is not an issue of geography. He IS of two worlds wherever he goes.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“I'm more depressed about the realities of the mature bureaucracy and more excited about the ideal that we're fighting for. And the juxtaposition has obvious consequences. Rolf Mowatt-Larrsen”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“What can we do?" It's not dismissive or resigned. He really wants to know.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“A Pakistani exchange student's maternal American host "managed to summon the transforming question of her culture, built on the revolutionary idea that people are the sovereign, the boss, captains of their own fate.

She said, simply, "But what do YOU think?”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“We are reformers in the spring, but iin autumn we stand by the old. Ralph Waldo Emerson”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“I'm a partisan, too. I'm in favor of AUTHENTICITY." US State Department veteran and U.N. refugee official Wendy Chamberlain”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“Necessity and desperation birth resourcefulness.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“A lawyer's empathy for her client deepens when she realizes that she has only seen the last couple of phases of his decline. How hard it must his initial adjustment have been to his loss of freedom?”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“He is now judging himself, harshly, by his captors' rules.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“Moral action – humble and honest – is the tribute that power must at some point pay to reason.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“Life-shaping institutions tend to start with an idea or revelation. They often become mostly about the preservation and expansion of authority, something they relinquish only with the greatest reluctance.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“Islam is in a formative period struggling to consolidate the vast reach won by both inspiration and force at its founding. Two centuries along, the faith of Muhammad hangs like an intricate veil: a religion still searching for institutional wholeness, a set of lessons to live by.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“An exchange student from Afghanistan "finds himself in the midst of America's circus of self-invention" as he experiences Halloween for the first time. His hosts bauble, "It's the greatest of holidays when you can become anything you want.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“In this era of public survival through continuous storytelling, people want someone who might surprise them.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“He was rebuilt, reconstituted by vengeance dressed up as high purpose.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“A sense of messianic purpose makes the national interest almost indistinguishable from the political interests of the president.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“One world leader warned another "the error of relying on the capability you have rather than developing the capability you need.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

“That's not the part that gnaws at Rolf. It's the last part, where Ezekiel says that "if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them...I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood.”
― Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism