Paul Collier quotes:

Eddie Robinson is about one word: winning and losing.

You can tell everybody that Eddie Robinson's out looking for a job right now, and believe me, he's a great kid. He's happy and he's healthy. All he needs is a couple of weeks to regain game fitness. Put him on the court and when the game counts ... Eddie Robinson is about one word: winning and losing. He's a great athlete, and I love him to death.

There is a simple way of avoiding excess risk-taking by the managers of our financial institutions. It is to make it a crime ... had a crime for reckless management of a financial institution been on the books, Northern Rock and RBS would not have blown up.

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.

Politicians would only move beyond gestures once there was a critical mass of informed citizens.

Launching a turnaround takes courage. I cannot measure that and so it is not going to be included in my analysis, but behind the moments of change there are always a few people within these societies who have decided to try to make a difference.

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

How do we give credible hope to the billion poorest people in the world? It requires compassion to get ourselves started, and enlightened self-interest to get serious... If economic divergence continues, combined with global integration, it will build a nightmare for our children.

Migration has been politicized before it has been analyzed.

Most conduct is guided by norms rather than by laws. Norms are voluntary and are effective because they are enforced by peer pressure.

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

At the core of all successful societies are procedures for blocking the advancement of bad men

The critical changes in trade policy... are politically difficult not because they threaten interests (they don't) but because they do not fit into any of the current slogans and so don't make it onto the agenda.

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

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

You are a citizen, and citizenship carries responsibilities.