“My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity.” YearsTwoCountryHundredOppositesTwentiesOpeningObservationJapanSplitsAmbiguityPresent DayTwo OppositesModernisation Author:Kenzaburo Oe
“Other countries may boast of this and that, but nobody can touch the United States for poisonous snakes. We have about twenty species, most of them deadly, and Europe has only five or six, none of them much good. We have fifteen kinds of Rattlesnakes alone and nobody else has even one. [Footnote: There is a species in Central and South America, but it probably came from here.]” KindMayCountryStatesAmericaUnitedUnited StatesFiveSixEuropeTwentiesSouthSpeciesOther CountriesFifteenSnakesBoastPoisonousSouth AmericaRattlesnakesPoisonous Snakes Author:Will Cuppy
“As the United States continues its slow but steady recovery from the depths of the financial crisis, nobody actually wants a massive austerity package to shock the economy back into recession, and so the odds have always been high that the game of budgetary chicken will stop short of disaster. Looming past the cliff, however, is a deep chasm that poses a much greater challenge -- the retooling of the country's economy, society, and government necessary for the United States to perform effectively in the twenty-first century.” WantFirstsCountryStatesGovernmentPastGamesChallengesUnitedUnited StatesEconomyGreaterCenturyTwentiesCrisisDepthFinancialDisasterRecoveryShockMassiveChickensSteadyOddsPackagesCliffsRecessionsFinancial CrisisChasmsAusterityLooming Author:Fareed Zakaria
“In Moscow, dim and green under the summer rain, columns of armour were waiting in the side-roads off the long avenue from Vnukovo airport. Tanks from the Taman Division stood beneath the dripping trees around Moscow University with their field kitchens and command trucks. This was not a new sight to me: the Soviet tanks had rested like that beneath the trees of the parks in Prague, late in another August twenty-three years before. Now they had invaded and crushed one more country -- their own.” YearsLongCountryThreeWaitingSidesTreeFieldsLateSummerRainSightTwentiesGreenUniversityCommandKitchenParksDivisionSovietThree YearsTruckAirportsAvenuesTanksCrushedColumnsAugustMoscowDrippingArmourPragueSummer Rain Author:Neal Ascherson
“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion... We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion.” ShouldYearsHas BeensCountryStatesWisdomPoliticsHalfEconomyCenturyTwentiesIndependentLiberalismRebellionElevenThirteen Book:Memoirs, Correspondence and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Late President of the United States Source: Memoirs, Correspondence and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Late President of the United States