There Is Nothing For You Here Quotes

“Russia is America’s Ghost of Christmas Future, a harbinger of things to come if we can’t adjust course and heal our political polarization.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“No state, no matter how advanced, is immune from flawed leadership, the erosion of political checks and balances, and the degradation of its institutions.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“Changes in technology come along roughly every five to seven years, so no one can ever have any expectation of permanence in the workplace. People's skills will always need upgrading. But the right kind of education for the twenty-first century is the one that prepares us to weather these changes—and which does so equally, without regard to where we are from or what your parents do.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“Education is the beating heart of the infrastructure of opportunity, but place—where you live—is the body that holds it. Place frames everything else. It has the greatest impact on an individual’s educational and economic opportunity and ability to build wealth. It can hold someone back from finding opportunity or provide a direct pathway to it. For all these reasons, unlocking the potential of place is one of the greatest imperatives of the twenty-first century.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“To compete with China in the twenty-first century, the United States will have to give similar precedence to education reform and expand access to educational and training opportunities for all Americans, not just a select or privileged few.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“You can’t perpetuate the myth in America of rugged individualism forever,” as she told me later. “Everyone benefits from networks and mentorships, but when men or people from affluent backgrounds network and mentor, nobody labels it like this. They are just ‘helping each other”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“In the euphoria at the end of the Cold War, the confluence of timing, events, and intent went unnoticed on the western side of the Iron Curtain. The UK and the U.S. could surely not have anything at all in common with the Soviet Union, given the total failure of its system . . . could we?”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“Initially in the United States, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and then the collapse of the USSR in 1991, there was no sense that America too was in postindustrial decline. The idea that the West had won the Cold War and capitalism had prevailed over communism deflected attention from the troubles of America’s old manufacturing centers and their displaced workers.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“struggle between capitalism and communism had concealed the fact that the United Kingdom, the USSR, and the United States had much in common. Once you lifted the veil, you could see the touch points beneath—especially when you knew what you were looking for.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“Education in all its forms—from elementary to secondary to further education and professional training—is the beating heart of the infrastructure of opportunity. It has the potential to define and redefine who you are and who you will be. For me, it was everything.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“Educational attainment is now a significant predictor of whether someone will have the opportunity to secure stable full-time employment and, crucially, how that person will vote.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“Populism is a political approach with no fixed ideology. It can pop up on both the left and the right of political thinking, and pretty much in any setting. The essence of populism is creating a direct link with “the people” or specific groups within a population and either bypassing or eliminating intermediaries like political parties, parliamentary representatives, and established institutions. Referenda, plebiscites, direct appeals, and executive orders form the substance of populism.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“A crisis to address at home becomes an opportunity to mess around abroad.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“Populist governments are, almost by definition, ill-suited to handle complex problems of governance. Style, swagger, and atmospherics, superficial and simplistic solutions, and enthusiastic sloganeering form the core of the populist's playbook—and are the antithesis of the toolkit needed to deal with a deadly pandemic.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“Dr. Richardson went on to explain that the university had had to lower its standards and make extra accommodations because low-income state school students’ grades and general grasp of their chosen subject matter often weren’t “good enough” in the first instance for them to be admitted. They were simply not prepared for college, she asserted. When I suggested (feeling somewhat affronted, given my own background and experience) that this might be because of deficiencies in their secondary school education, Dr. Richardson countered that it should not be the role of St. Andrews, or universities in general, to fix the problems of the UK secondary school system. This was the responsibility of the central government and local education authorities.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“By the end of the 1990s, the expectation in the United States was that young Americans should and would have to pay for their own education because of the personal advancement it promised. In keeping with the post-1980s focus on individual responsibility and attainment, the state would provide neither a handout nor a hand up; instead, students should take out loans that they could pay off later. Armed with their degrees and other qualifications, they would surely find higher-skilled, better-paid jobs in the new knowledge economy than their parents had found in the old industrial sectors. In short, a college degree and other advanced or technical training were individuals’ personal investments in their own future, not part of the state’s investment in its population’s education or in the country’s future. The ethos of Thatcherism and Reaganism had spread from economics to education. Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, their influence would eventually prove disastrous on both a human and a political level.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“In this regard, I mirrored the experience of millions of young Americans after World War II, who found college to be the door to a job and a better life than their parents’. But in contrast to the prevailing perception in the United States that anyone can go to college if they study hard, when I began work on this book, I found that 72 percent of students (men and women) at the 150 top colleges in the United States, including Harvard, came from the richest 25 percent of American families. Only 3 percent came from the poorest, and yet this was the stratum in which I had started out in life in the United Kingdom.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“Poor student achievement in schools in impoverished areas, in both the UK and the U.S., reflects the demographics and the economy of the surrounding region. It does not indicate deficiencies in the talent, potential, and aspirations of individual students.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“Infrastructure improvements, for basic transportation to get to work and Wi-Fi to enable people to work from home without climbing to the top of a compost heap or a birch tree, have to be developed with federal grants and low-interest community loans.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“In a ten-year period, for example, 176 rural hospitals and associated medical centers closed, forcing residents to drive long distances, sometimes for hours, even for emergency treatment.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“the solutions to our broken health-care and other parts of the social support system are staring us in the face. All it would take to implement them is political will.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“The challenge for us today is to create these kinds of mechanisms and networks for domestic relocation. Of course, these support systems cannot substitute for improving the overall quality of life in places like Bishop Auckland and small-town America, so people can stay where they already are, at home. But if people must leave to seek opportunity elsewhere, they should have a shot at doing so.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“In the final reckoning, in both the United Kingdom and the United States, there should be no such thing as the wrong place to live. And in America, our currently polarized partisan politics and fragmented sectarian society would look very different if we were able to realize the vision of a more inclusive nation where opportunity is spread more evenly across the country’s vast landscape and its population.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“Education is the beating heart of the infrastructure of opportunity, but place—where you live—is the body that holds it. Place frames everything else. It has the greatest impact on an individual’s educational and economic opportunity and ability to build wealth. It can hold someone back from finding opportunity or provide a direct pathway to it. For all these reasons, unlocking the potential of place is one of the greatest imperatives of the twenty-first century”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms empowered marginalized groups, undermined social cohesion and social capital, and eroded Americans’ sense of common, shared purpose. The Russian intelligence”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“National and international networking among extremists was greatly enhanced by entry into a digital world that operates on economically or commercially defined algorithms, which are specifically designed to attract people’s attention and divide them into “affinity groups.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“In his book and his lectures, Professor Kornai underscored that poor people and unemployment are the downside of every market economy, including in the United States. He pointed out that the market cannot and does not solve every social problem. And no matter what their aspirations and opportunities may be, not everyone will get rich. Society will always be divided into haves and have-nots; the key question for economists and policymakers to resolve was how to bridge the inevitable income and opportunity gaps. In the case of Eastern Europe, Professor Kornai had recommended the creation of a comprehensive social protection fund and financial aid to cushion the transition to the private sector for laid-off state factory workers.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“Private British companies, often under royal license, exported more than three million slaves from Africa (and initially poor white British men and women as indentured servants) to British colonies between 1640 and 1807. The slave trade was not formally abolished and prohibited until January 1, 1808, thanks to a parliamentary bill passed after two decades of bitter political debate in March 1807.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“The men in all those towns and villages were decimated by war and work. There were no cenotaphs or special corners of the graveyard for those who died later from poverty or despair, or both, when the mines had gone, but there should have been.”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

“most social connections were formed through education in schools and colleges, then in the workplace”
― Fiona Hill, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century