Soft Power Quotes

“What is soft power? It is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics

“When you can get others to admire your ideals and to want what you want, you do not have to spend as much on sticks and carrots to move them in your direction. Seduction is always more effective than coercion, and many values like democracy, human rights, and individual opportunities are deeply seductive.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics

“Smart power is neither hard nor soft. It is both.     Joseph”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics

“إن القوتين الصلبة والناعمة تعزز كل منهما الأخرى أحيانا، وتتدخل فيها أحيانا أخرى”
― جوزيف س. ناي, القوة الناعمة: وسيلة النجاح في السياسة الدولية

“power is the ability to influence the behavior of others to get the outcomes one wants.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics

“What is soft power? It is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies. When our policies are seen as legitimate in the eyes of others, our soft power is enhanced. America has long had a great deal of soft power. Think of the impact of Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms in Europe at the end of World War II; of young people behind the Iron Curtain listening to American music and news on Radio Free Europe; of Chinese students symbolizing their protests in Tiananmen Square by creating a replica of the Statue of Liberty; of newly liberated Afghans in 2001 asking for a copy of the Bill of Rights; of young Iranians today surreptitiously watching banned American videos and satellite television broadcasts in the privacy of their homes. These are all examples of America’s soft power. When you can get others to admire your ideals and to want what you want, you do not have to spend as much on sticks and carrots to move them in your direction. Seduction is always more effective than coercion, and many values like
democracy, human rights, and individual opportunities are deeply seductive. As General Wesley Clark put it, soft power “gave us an influence far beyond the hard edge of traditional balance-of-power politics.” But attraction can turn to repulsion if we act in an arrogant manner and destroy the real message of our deeper values.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics

“Power is also like love, easier to experience than to define or measure, but no less real for that.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics

“Information is power, and modern information technology is spreading information more widely than ever before in history.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics

“More important to be feared than to be loved. But in today's world, it is best to be both.........Information is power...............Power is like the weather. Everyone depends on it and talks about it, but few understand it.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics

“Seduction is always more effective than coercion, and many values like democracy, human rights, and individual opportunities are deeply seductive.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics

“The real key is not how many enemy do I kill. The real key is how many allies do I grow.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics

“Ironically, the soft power of Wahhabism has not proved to be a resource that the Saudi government could control or use to obtain favorable outcomes. Instead, it has been like a sorcerer’s apprentice that has come back to bedevil its original creator. The radicals regard the royal family as corrupt and in league with Western infidels. They aim to overthrow or disrupt the government, and launched terrorist attacks in Riyadh in 2003. The royal family’s bargain with the Wahhabist clerics has backfired because the soft power of Islamic radicalism has flowed in the direction of Osama bin Laden and his goal of overthrowing the Saudi government, not in the direction of making the Saudi government more secure.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics

“The rise of radical Islamism received a good deal of state help from Saudi Arabia, where the ruling family agreed to propagate Wahhabism as a means of propitiating the clerics, thus buying “their own political legitimacy at the cost of stability elsewhere.”65 Because funding of Wahhabist institutions comes from both Saudi government ministries and private charities, it is virtually impossible to estimate the total spending. One expert testified to Congress that the Saudis had spent roughly $70 billion on aid projects since the 1970s, and others report that they sponsored 1,500 mosques and 2,000 schools worldwide from Indonesia to France.66 These institutions often displace more moderate and worse-funded institutions promulgating moderate interpretations of Islam.67 Even if these numbers are incorrect, a fraction of the dollar figures still dwarfs what the United States has spent on public diplomacy in the Muslim world.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics

“Moreover, Europeans provide 70 percent of overseas development assistance to poor countries—four times more than the United States. Europe also has ten times as many troops as the United States involved in peacekeeping operations under multilateral organizations such as the UN and NATO.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics

“ويفكر بعض الناس في القوة بطريقة ضيقة، من حيث إصدار الأوامر والقسر. وأنت تجرب ذلك عندما تستطيع أن تجعل الناس يفعلون ما يفضلون أن لا يفعلوه.(1)فتقول لهم " اقفزوا !" فيقفزون. ويبدو هذا اختياراً بسيطاً للقوة ولكن الأشياء ليست مستقيمة كما تبدو لأول وهلة. افرض أن الذين تأمرهم ، مثل حفيداتي، يحبون القفز أصلا ؟ فعندما نقيس القوة. بمعايير تغيير سلوك الآخرين فإن علينا أن نعرف أولا ما هي الأشياء التي يفضلونها. وإلاّ فسنكون مخطئين في معرفة قوتنا كالديك الذين يظن أن صياحه هو الذي يجعل الشمس تشرق! ومن ثم فقد تتبخر القوة عندما يتغير السياق. فالتلميذ المتنمر الذي يُرهِبُ الأطفالَ الآخرين في ساحة المدرسة ويجعلهم يقفزون بأمره يفقد قوته حالما يعود تلاميذ الصف من الفرصة إلى غرفة صفهم المنضبطة بشكل صارم. والدكتاتور القاسي يستطيع أن يسجن احد المنشقين ويعدمه . ولكن ذلك قد لا يثبت قوته إذا كان المنشق يسعى إلى الفوز بالاستشهاد. فالقوة إذن تعتمد دائما على السياق الذي توجد ضمنه العلاقة.”
― Joseph S. Nye Jr., القوة الناعمة: وسيلة النجاح في السياسة الدولية