British - Diplomat | August 14, 1956 -
Northern Ireland still suffers from its past, and it will take generations to escape sectarianism and for violence to end totally. Nonetheless, it is in a different place now than during the Troubles, and it will not go back to the old days.
Jonathan Powell
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I'd love to have a proper sailing boat and go around the world.
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Maybe strong leaders are not quite as alluring as we think, and we should celebrate the fact that our leaders are just like us. Just because one candidate can't remember his whole speech and the other likes to put his feet up on the job doesn't mean they can't govern.
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I'm of the establishment but anti-establishment.
Establishment
Every time we meet a new terrorist group, we argue they are utterly different and we can learn nothing from the last time. Of course they are different, but some lessons on how we deal with them seem to apply in all cases.
TimeLearnNewMeetGroupNothing
The Israeli people are skeptical about the chances of a long-term peace, but if they saw it, they'd grab it. Any Israeli government that wants to be reelected should be interested in a lasting peace.
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Terrorism seems to be the ugly twin of democracy. We need to learn to live with it because we are vulnerable to it.
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When it comes to terrorism, governments seem to suffer from a collective amnesia. All of our historical experience tells us that there can be no purely military solution to a political problem, and yet every time we confront a new terrorist group, we begin by insisting we will never talk to them.
TimeExperiencePoliticalProblem
I do not think that war is always wrong: sometimes it is necessary to stop a dictator, prevent massive human-rights abuses, or expel an invader. But I have also seen that in the modern world, civil wars are the greatest threat to humanitarian security.
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If there is a political cause, then there has to be a political solution.
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It was the rootlessness that went with being the son of an RAF officer that shaped me. I had been to 11 schools by the time I was 9.
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You can't negotiate in public. People won't make concessions in public. They will do that in private. Like sausage making, you have to do it behind closed doors.
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