Eastward to Tartary Quotes

“Jews, Gypsies, Kurds, and other minorities were generally safe within autocratic regimes such as Habsburg Austria and Ottoman Turkey but were killed or oppressed when these autocracies began giving birth to independent states dominated by ethnic majorities, such as Austria, Hungary, Romania, Greece, and Turkey.”
― Robert D. Kaplan, Eastward to Tartary

“Indeed, in Central Europe, communism claimed to be the cure for the economic inequalities and other cruelties wrought by bourgeois industrial development, a radical liberal populism of a sort, while in the former Byzantine-Ottoman empire, where there had never been such modern development, communism was simply a destructive force, a second Mongol invasion.”
― Robert D. Kaplan, Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus

“There is no magic like travelling alone, without friends or colleagues to condition one's opinions. It is the very loneliness that makes travel worthwhile: to be in isolation with historical forces, with only landscapes and books as guides.”
― Robert D. Kaplan, Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus

“Self-interest at its healthiest implicitly recognizes the self-interest of others, and therein lies the possibility of compromise. A rigid moral position admits few compromises.”
― Robert D. Kaplan, Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus

“Hungary shares more than it may like to admit with its former Warsaw Pact allies Romania and Bulgaria. Fischer explained that despite its economic progress, Hungary still cannot easily escape its past:”
― Robert D. Kaplan, Eastward to Tartary

“No hay nada como viajar solo, sin amigos ni compañeros que influyan en las opiniones de uno. La soledad es la que hace que un viaje merezca la pena: estar a solas con fuerzas históricas con paisajes y libros como únicos guías.”
― Robert Kaplan, Rumbo a Tartaria