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Quote by Robert D. Putnam

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Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

This book delves into the reasons behind the weakening of social ties and community involvement in American society, exploring both historical and contemporary factors that have contributed to this trend. more

Author

Robert D. Putnam
Robert D. Putnam

Robert D. Putnam is an American political scientist renowned for his research on civil society, social capital, and the impact of globalization on democracy. He is a professor at Harvard University and is highly regarded for his insightful observations on public life. more

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“We still don't have a good word to describe what is missing in Cameroon, indeed in poor countries across the world. But we are starting to understand what it is. Some people call it 'social capital, or maybe 'trust'. Others call it 'the rule of law', or 'institutions'. But these are just labels. The problem is that Cameroon, like other poor countries, is a topsy-turvy world in which it's in most people's interest to take action that directly or indirectly damages everyone else.”

“Burke's complaint against the [(French)] revolutionaries was that they assumed the right to spend all trusts and endowments on their own self-made emergency. Schools, church foundations, hospitals - all institutions that had been founded by people, now dead, for the benefit of their successors - were expropriated or destroyed, the result being the total waste of accumulated savings, leading to massive inflation, the collapse of education and the loss of the traditional forms of social and medical relief. In this way contempt for the dead leads to the disenfranchisement of the unborn, and all that result is not, perhaps, inevitable, it has been repeated by all subsequent revolutions. Through their contempt for the intentions and emotions of those who had laid things by, revolutions have systematically destroyed the stock of social capital, and always revolutionaries justify this by impeccable utilitarian thinking.”

“The West’s adversarial political system, in which all manner of decisions were made by majority rule, was little more than a refined version of civil war, replacing one form of coercion (fighting) with another (voting).”

“For all the enlightened nations that profess a loyalty to liberty, democracy, economy and all the rest, there has long been a readiness to look for a chosen one; as Carlyle pointed out, even the French, those great anti-venerators, those relentless beheaders of Great Men, worshipped Voltaire.”