Best of Times, Worst of Times Quotes

“As Mao observed, the guerrilla is like a fish: it needs water- that is, popular support -to survive, and, I might add, a freedom of movement that exists only if the government is relatively liberal or relatively inefficient. If government control and coercion are effective, a guerrilla movement cannot make progress. It is not that dictatorships are free of grievances- on the contrary -but that they permit no outlet for protest; the rebels will be arrested, sent to prison, or shot. Their arrest will not be reported by the mass media, and as it has no palpable political consequences, their sacrifice will be in vain. If intellectuals are alienated they will keep the fact strictly to themselves, for fear of losing their jobs or worse.”
― Walter Laqueur, Best of Times, Worst of Times

“I have been writing mainly on history and politics, and the choice was in some ways obvious for, like most of my contemporaries, I was at the mercy of political forces that we could not possibly influence and the question why this was the case constantly obtruded itself.”
― Walter Laqueur, Best of Times, Worst of Times