Tony Travers:

London is becoming a First World core surrounded by what seems to be going from a second to a Third World population.

John Rapley:

As states recede and the new medievalism advances, the outside world is destined to move increasingly beyond the control -- and even the understanding -- of the new Rome.

Joel Kotkin:

Britain's welfare state now accounts for nearly one-third of government spending.

John Lanchester:

The average British household owes 160 per cent of its annual income. That makes us, individually and collectively, a lot like the cartoon character who's run off the end of a cliff and hasn't realized it yet.

We in Britain are, to use a technical economic term, screwed.

David Runciman:

Politics in the UK is now comprehensively out of sync.

During the Blair years there was enough money around to paper over the cracks. Not any more. When the money runs out, the cracks start to show.

Neil Howe and William Strauss:

Each generation belongs to one of four types, and these types repeat sequentially in a fixed pattern.

Anatole Kaletsky:

The battle over bailouts in Europe is only a sideshow compared with the great social conflict that lies ahead all over the world in the next 20 years. This will not be a struggle between nations or social classes, but between generations.

Tom Friedman:

For 60 years you could really say being in politics, being a political leader, was, on balance, about giving things away to people. That's what you did most of your time.

I think we're entering an era where being in politics is going to be more than anything else about taking things away from people. It's going to be very, very interesting.

Neil Howe:

If you think that things couldn't get any worse, wait till the 2020s.

The world is entering a demographic transformation of unprecedented dimensions.

Population trends point inexorably toward a more dominant U.S. role in a world that will need us more, not less.

Decius, on his generation:

Our job is to apply our well-earned cynicism and fail to follow the baby boomers off a cliff in their pursuit of some idealistic agenda.

Rory Stewart:

"It's like they're coming in and saying to you, 'I'm going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?' And you say, 'I don't think you should drive your car off the cliff.' And they say, 'No, no, that bit's already been decided - the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.' And you say, 'Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.' And then they say, 'We've consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says ...'"