113 Quotes by David Ignatius

Hedge-fund managers make too much money relative to their social utility. I wish their rewards were a bit closer to those of, say, schoolteachers.

Images sometimes capture particular periods in history. The unreachable green light, beckoning from across the bay in 'The Great Gatsby,' has become a symbol of the yearning of America in the 1920s.

The best restraint is old-fashioned market discipline, in which financial traders know that they, personally, will lose a ton of money if they take risky bets that don't pan out.

Machiavelli did believe that it was better to appear to be good than to be good. If you're good, you're just too vulnerable, but if you appear to be good, you get all the benefits plus you can be sneaky and, when necessary, stab someone in the back.

Make the financial industry pay for its mistakes. That's the idea behind the best of the Obama administration's reform proposals: If banks issue securities backed by mortgages, say, then require them to hold some of that paper so that they will bear some of the losses.

The framers hated the tyranny of King George, but they were also afraid of the mob. That's why they put so many checks and balances into our system, to guard against the excesses of a government that might be inflamed by public passion or perverted by a dictator's whim.

A disaffected America can be drawn into a civilized - but disruptive - dialogue about political change and reformation.

I've tried, in 'Bloodmoney,' to tell a story that gets at the crazy relationship between the ISI and the CIA, these absolutely fascinating, often mutually destructive two scorpions in a bottle kind of relationship that they have.

If you want to hear arguments against deploying a big U.S. ground force in Syria, just ask a general.