25 Quotes by Paul Collier

Elections determine who is in power, but they do not determine how power is used.

Populism offers the headless heart; ideology offers the heartless head.

Persuading everyone to behave decently to each other because the society is so fragile is a worthy goal, but it may be more straightforward just to make the societies less fragile, which means developing their economies.

Suppose a country starts its independence with the three economic characteristics that globally make a country prone to civil war: low income, slow growth, and dependence upon primary commodity exports. It is playing Russian roulette. That is not just an idle metaphor: the risk that a country in the bottom billion falls into civil war in any five-year period is nearly one in six, the same risk facing a player of Russian roulette.

Without an informed electorate, politicians will continue to use the bottom billion merely for photo opportunities, rather than promoting real transformation.

Change in the societies at the very bottom must come predominantly from within; we cannot impose it on them.

Poverty is not intrinsically a trap, otherwise we would all still be poor.

Not all developing countries are the same.

What is true of asset managers is true of lawyers. Willem Buiter, former Chief Economist for Citigroup, puts it aptly: the first third of lawyers produce the immense social value we know as the 'rule of law'. The next third are working on legal disputes that are essentially zero-sum games: each side over-invests in winning the tournament and so they are socially useless....The final third of lawyers are socially predatory: they are employed in the legal scams that fleece the productive.