Bulgaria has been deindustrialized by interest groups who extracted state assets like oil states extract the oil in their ground.

Democracy is the only game in town. The problem is [when] people start to believe that it is not a game worth playing.

Transparency is not about restoring trust in institutions. Transparency is the politics of managing mistrust.

The Church of TED is very optimistic. Bulgarians are some of the most pessimistic in the world. There are the Happy, the Unhappy and the Bulgarians.

Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments.

As a rule, governments monitor people.

[It's] difficult to engage people in politics when they believe that what really matters is where they personally stand.

Russians clearly perceive America's global influence as being in irreversible decline and American society shattered by major political, economic and ideological crises.

Let us try to heal the mind first before we heal the body.

He's special, but not the kind anyone wants to be. I don't know what to do about that.

You and I are the remains of an unfulfilled legacy, heirs to a kingdom of stolen identities and ragged confusion.

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Man has the right . . . to play as he will . . . to think what he will: to speak what he will: to write what he will: to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will: to dress as he will.

Justice is the sanction of established injustice.

I was in Moldova airport and I went into the duty-free shop - and there wasn't a duty-free shop.

Days go by I can feel 'em flying like a hand out the window in the wind!

The transaction between writer and reader is human civilization's most dazzling feat, yet it's such a part of our lives that it's, well, prosaic.

The question is not Will you succeed? but rather, Will you matter?