Developed Country Quotes & Sayings

If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can bestow - in some parts a very paradise on earth - I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most full developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant - I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life - again I should point to India. — Friedrich Max Muller

Obviously it's easier to grow faster when you are a less developed country than when you are where the U.S. is. — Chris Hayes

The situation - having to choose between imposing higher retail prices and reducing investments and military spending - created a dilemma for the government: deciding between conflict with the public or with the Party economic elite. But not making a decision heightened the risk that, as the crisis developed, there would be conflict with both the public and the elite.18 The new generation of leaders clearly did not understand this. The traditional management of the economy was oriented on natural, rather than abstract, parameters. The development of cattle breeding was discussed at the highest level more frequently than the country's budget. Industry and business leaders regarded finances as necessary but dreary bookkeeping.19 In addition, information on the real state of the budget, hard currency reserves, foreign debt, and balance of payments was available only to an extremely narrow circle of people, many of whom understood nothing about it anyway. — Yegor Gaidar

Congo is one of the least-developed countries in the world, and has millions of acres of virtually untouched forest. — Anderson Cooper

As I witness and participate in our visionary efforts to revitalize Detroit and contrast them with the multibillion dollars' worth of megaprojects advanced by politicians and developed that involve casinos, giant stadiums, gentrification, and the Super Bowl, I am saddened by their shortsightedness. At the same time I rejoice in the energy being unleashed in the community by our human-scale programs that involve bringing the country back into the city and removing the walls between schools and communities, between generations, and between ethnic groups. And I am confident just as in the early twentieth century people came from around the world to marvel at the mass production lines pioneered by Henry Ford, in the twenty-first century they will be coming to marvel at the thriving neighborhoods that are the fruit of our visionary programs. — Grace Lee Boggs

If you see any country that is advanced and developed today, it is because that society is fundamentally based on principles of truth and honesty. — Sunday Adelaja

The majority of people in developed countries spend at least some time interacting with the Internet, and Governments are abusing that necessity in secret to extend their powers beyond what is necessary and appropriate. — Edward Snowden

For a country founded on the idea that rights are inalienable and inherent from birth, we've developed a high tolerance for conditional rights and conditional citizenship. — Matt Taibbi

Thanks to quality education, Israel is one of the most advanced countries in the world .. Israel is advancing in high-tech even more than other developed countries. — Bill Gates

The suddenness of the leap from hardware to software cannot but produce a period of anarchy and collapse, especially in the developed countries. — Marshall McLuhan

Through this tradition of face-to-face oral communication, now in danger of disappearing, black folks maintained the conviction of their own worth and saved their own souls by refusing to fall victim to fear or the hatred of their oppressors, which they recognized would have been more destructive to themselves than to their enemies. As the poet Lucille Clifton put it, "Ultimately if you fill yourself with venom you will be poisoned."3 There were incidents of individual violence, usually crimes of passion committed by someone under the influence of alcohol and over a man or a woman. But despite the unimaginable cruelty that they suffered, blacks kept their sense of humor and created the art form of the blues as a way to work through and transcend the harshness of their lives. Living under the American equivalent of Nazism, they developed an oasis of civility in the spiritual desert of "me-firstism" that characterized the rest of the country. — Grace Lee Boggs

In an underdeveloped country don't drink the water. In a developed country don't breathe the air. — Jonathan Raban

Lokpal Bill alone is not adequate to fight corruption. We need a comprehensive anti-corruption code in this country. The UPA Government has developed a powerful anti-corruption frame work consisting of eight new Central laws ... This is not about one Bill, this is about a frame work and we want to deliver that frame work to the country — Rahul Gandhi

I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we'd never smelled the fumes of petroleum. — Wole Soyinka

For hundreds of years, more than half of the face of this earth has been controlled by European countries and turned in to colonies, and the Europeans have sucked up whatever they could find, brought it all home, and made themselves rich. But not Germany and Japan; they didn't get anything. But now they have just as much power as any other developed country, and so they are demanding their share. That is the origin of this war, a war between greedy nations. — Eka Kurniawan

The simple fact is that the world is not paying for the services the forests provide. At the moment, they are worth more dead than alive-for soya, for beef, for palm oil and for logging, feeding the demand from other countries ... I think we need to be clear that the drivers of rainforest destruction do not originate in the rainforest nations, but in the more developed countries which, unwittingly or not, have caused climate change. — Prince Charles

The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, dwarfing the rates of nearly every developed country, even surpassing those in highly repressive regimes like Russia, China, and Iran. — Michelle Alexander

Roughly two billion people participate in the money economy, with less than half of those living in the wealthy countries of the developed world. These affluent 800 million, however, account for more than 75 percent of the world's energy and resource consumption, and also create the bulk of its industrial, toxic, and consumer waste. — Stuart L. Hart

The Unites States is the largest developed country. Canada enjoys a flourishing economy and advanced technology. Mexico is an important developing country. China attaches great importance to the friendly cooperation with the three countries,. — Li Zhaoxing

The internal conditions in Iran are worsening in all aspects. Poverty and unemployment are becoming more severe, despite the fact that Iran has turned into a developed and industrialized country. — Moshe Katsav

Our community is like many around the country that have, as the gentleman from New York referenced, sophisticated planning and zoning regulations. These are elements that are developed as a result of local community pressure to balance interests. — Earl Blumenauer

Your co-orbital anti-satellite weapon is designed to destroy satellites. Furthermore, the Soviet Union began research in defenses utilizing directed energy before the United States did and seems well along in research (and incidentally, some testing outside laboratories) of lasers and other forms of directed energy. I do not point this out in reproach or suggest these activities are in violation of agreements, but if we were to follow your logic to the effect that what you call space-strike weapons would only be developed by a country planning a first strike, what would we think? — Ronald Reagan

There is not going to be, we can be quite certain, there's not going to be any action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by China or India or Indonesia or Brazil unless all developed countries are making a major effort. It will still be a big job to get them in, even if we are all making the effort. But our making the effort is a necessary condition. — Ross Garnaut

A primary task of management in the developed countries in the decades ahead will be to make knowledge productive. — Peter Drucker

In the history of this country [USA], the reason we have never developed a social democratic base, the way they have in Europe - we're the only Western country without some kind of universal health care. There's a reason, and it is because corporate interests have divided the American people by race and ethnicity, the Irish from the blacks, the Germans from the German Jews. — Joan Walsh Anglund

It was only after I'd grown up and left that I developed an attitude [towards the South]. And at first my attitude was that I was ashamed of it. But the older I got the more I realize that the transgressions of the South were the transgressions of mankind, and that there were certain things that were superior. There is a cultural attitude in the South that embraces respect for family ... and in some ways for country. Although patriotism is not among the highest virtues on my list, still, the patriot believes in something larger than himself, and it is therefore a virtue. There is an attitude in the South that there is more to life than the moment. — V.S. Naipaul

Let me say that I think the economic history of the last 150 years clearly shows that if you want to industrialize a country in a short period, let us say 20 years, and you don't have a well-developed private sector, entrepreneurial class, then central planning is important. — Manmohan Singh

From the late 1940s, into and through the '50s, there developed a complex interaction between federal government, state and local government, real-estate interests, commercial interests and court decisions, which had the effect of undermining the mass transit system across the country. — Noam Chomsky

The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future. — Karl Marx

Custom developed digital weapons, cyber weapons nowadays typically chain together a number of zero-day exploits that are targeted against the specific site, the specific target that they want to hit. But it depends, this level of sophistication, on the budget and the quality of the actor who's instigating the attack. If it's a country that's less poor or less sophisticated, it'll be a less sophisticated attack. — Edward Snowden

The aging and decreasing population is a serious problem in many developed countries today. In Japan's case, these demographic changes are taking place at a more rapid pace than any other country has ever experienced. — Toshihiko Fukui

Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible. This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable. — John Berger

First World countries may have great infrastructure, material comfort and modernity, but these cannot compare with the way the homeland speaks to a Filipino's heart. There may be potholes in the street where I live but they 'speak' to me in a way that a flawless highway in a developed foreign country cannot. I may be upset by the potholes, but the feeling is a familiar one, and it is easier to endure than alienation in a foreign land. The things that upset me about the country 'speak' to me in that same familiar language. In fact, it is so familiar that my sense of humor can run circles around the very things I complain about. But that is precisely the problem: because these have become too familiar, I am no longer moved by them - at least not enough to be able to change things. Indeed, they have become 'my' potholes. Life in the Philippines may be hell at times, but it remains our home. — Jim Paredes

The reports from the scientific world are that there is a very severe and escalating impact of HIV and AIDS in South Africa, and from what I have read, it is assuming particular, distinct characteristics, which, for instance, were atypical of how this phenomenon had developed in the States. This meant that we must look at what it is that results in all of this, specific to our country. — Thabo Mbeki

Managers are agents of transformation, converting the workforce in developed countries from one of manual workers to one of highly educated knowledge workers. — Peter Drucker

It never ceases to amaze me how many Christians, in the North and the South, continue to refer to the former as the "developed" and the latter as the "developing" world. When we in the South use this term to describe ourselves, we are evaluating ourselves by a set of cultural values that are alien to our own cultures, let alone to a Christian world-view! All our normative images and yardsticks of "development" are ideologically loaded. Who dictates that mushrooming TV satellite dishes and skyscrapers are signs of "development"? Who, apart from the automobile industry and the advertising agencies, seriously believes that a country with six-lane highways and multi-story car-parks is more "developed" than one whose chief mode of transport is railways? Does the fact that there are more telephones in Manhattan, New York, than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, mean that human communication is more developed in the former than the latter? — Vinoth Ramachandra

I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States. — Antonin Dvorak

It is quite possible that China may reach the stages of socialism and communism considerably later than your countries in the West which are so much more highly developed economically. — Mao Zedong

The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than decreases the gap between the rich and poor countries of the world. — Kwame Nkrumah

I've done my time in being broke in Indonesia. Eating Goat soup. Australia's a developed country, you've got a lot of taxes, rents are high and its quite difficult to survive as an artist especially when you are just coming up. — Andrew Jack

If you look at the curricula of most universities and schools in this country [USA], considering our long encounter with the Islamic world, there is very little there that you can get hold of that is really informative about Islam. If you look at the popular media, you'll see that the stereotype that begins with Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik has really remained and developed into the transnational villain of television and film and culture in general. — Edward Said

Technology is probably the single biggest driver of productivity gains for the developed countries. For example, I think it's much more important than free trade. — Peter Thiel

I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed - geared toward improving our entire society. — Laurene Powell Jobs

Today, you have 20 percent of the world controlling 80 percent of the Gross Domestic Product; you've got a $30 trillion (US) world economy, and $24 trillion of it is in the developed countries ... These inequities can't exist. So if you are talking about systemic breakdown, I think you have to look in terms of social breakdown. — James Wolfensohn

Developed countries will always welcome the Einsteins of this world - those individuals whose talents are already recognized and deemed to have value. This welcome doesn't usually extend to the poor and uneducated people seeking to enter the country. But the truth, supported by the facts of history and the richness of immigrant contribution to America's distinction in the world, is that the most entrepreneurial, innovative, motivated citizen is the one who has been given an opportunity and wants to repay the debt. — Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa

All of which suggested literary translation, and Korean seemed a good bet - barely anything available in English, yet it was a modern, developed country, so the work had to be out there, plus the rarity would make it both easier to secure a student grant and more of a niche when it came to work. — Deborah Smith

First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore ... — Ottmar Edenhofer

Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many things I read surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very confused knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers, and boundless seas. This book developed new and mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice. — Mary Shelley

Go to Mozambique! As long as you don't expect to find flawless infrastructure, just go. Because this is a country where people have not quite grown accustomed to tourists. You still feel a genuineness that no longer exists in countries where tourism has been industrially developed. — Henning Mankell

Vietnam remains an underdeveloped economy with a high poverty incidence, ... party, people and army will continue to stand united and ... turn Vietnam into a developed country in the coming decades. — Tran Duc Luong

A country is not developed by constructing bridges, houses or roads but it is developed only if the brains of the people living in that country are developed, only if their level of culture is raised and only if an infinite importance is given to the science and to the knowledge! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Where do people earn the Per Capita Income? More than one poor starving soul would like to know. In our countries, numbers live better than people. How many people prosper in times of prosperity? How many people find their lives developed by development? — Eduardo Galeano

India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay. — Shashi Tharoor

The problems are our lives. In the "developed" countries, at least, the large problems occur because all of us are living either partly wrong or almost entirely wrong. It was not just the greed of corporate shareholders and the hubris of corporate executives that put the fate of Prince William Sound into one ship; it was also our demand that energy be cheap and plentiful. — Wendell Berry

Money comes to Switzerland through three illegal sources: tax evasion in other developed countries, the blood money of dictators and other rulers in the Third World and organized crime. — Jean Ziegler

Fiona had never learned her mother's language and she had never shown much respect for the stories that it preserved-the stories that Grant had taught and written about, and still did write about, in his working life. She referred to their heroes as "old Njal" or "old Snorri." But in the last few years she had developed an interest in the country itself and looked at travel guides. She read about William Morris's trip, and Auden's. She didn't really plan to travel there. She said the weather was too dreadful. Also-she said-there ought to be one place you thought about and knew about and maybe longed for-but never did get to see. — Alice Munro

By a quirk of culture and history, it could be that China has arrived today where many other 'more developed countries' will arrive tomorrow. — John Woodward

Most of the well-developed world - Australia, Western Europe - they develop their resources base, they inventory it, they develop it, and they view it as a good source of jobs and revenue. We are a country that for too long has taken affordable energy for granted. — John S. Watson

Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries — Henry A. Kissinger

I just play to progressive audiences. You know, if they're watching Discovery Channel, History Channel, that kind of thing, "Monty Python" have already laid the groundwork. They're known around the world. People like that kind of surrealist, left-field humor, and that's what I do. And "Saturday Night Live," a lot of American humor. "The Simpsons," above all, the weird, left-field humor, which I love. And sardonic. So that's all I'm doing. I find that audience, and they're in every developed country around the world. — Eddie Izzard

Publications by the World Health Organization show that diphtheria is steadily declining in most European countries, including those in which there has been no immunization. The decline began long before vaccination was developed. There is certainly no guarantee that vaccination will protect a child against the disease; in fact, over 30,000 cases of diphtheria have been recorded in the United Kingdom in fully immunized children. — Leon Chaitow

I'm not going to recommend recklessness but somewhere just short of it - testing yourself and proactively pursuing a rite of passage has become necessary because in western developed countries we've become very comfort-addicted. — Sean Penn

I love travelling, and had the pleasure of being in the most developed country in the world and then parts of two of the most pristine natural areas of the world: the Galapagos islands and the Equador Amazon jungle. The contrast was incredible. — Adam Garcia

Brazilians need to work on their own national pride. I always think that they suffer from national low-self esteem. It's a lesser-developed country, and they have struggled so much. Sometimes they have an attitude that, if it's Brazilian, it can't be good. — Amy Irving

Americans all benefit from the physical and institutional infrastructure that has developed from the country's collective efforts over generations. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

By creating the European Central Bank, the member states exposed their own government bonds to the risk of default. Developed countries that issue bonds in their own currency never default, because they can always print money. Their currency may depreciate, but the risk of default is absent. — George Soros

Now, for the moment, we are safe. The only kind of international violence that worries most people in the developed countries is terrorism: from imminent heart attack to a bad case of hangnail in fifteen years flat. We are very lucky people
but we need to use the time we have been granted wisely, because total war is only sleeping. All the major states are still organized for war, and all that is needed for the world to slide back into a nuclear confrontation is a twist of the kaleidoscope that shifts international relations into a new pattern of rival alliances. — Gwynne Dyer

If Scotland was independent, we'd be the 14th richest country in the developed world. — Nicola Sturgeon

Or to put it another way, our children and our grandchildren are less literate and less numerate than we are. They are less able to navigate the world, to understand it to solve problems. They can be more easily lied to and misled, will be less able to change the world in which they find themselves, be less employable. All of these things. And as a country, England will fall behind other developed nations because it will lack a skilled workforce. And while politicians blame the other party for these results, the truth is, we need to teach our children to read and to enjoy reading. We — Neil Gaiman

In the field of snobbery, Australia is an underdeveloped country; even a few British ex-colonies, regarded as under developed in all other respects, could export a great deal of snobbery to Australia and still have enough to spare for their own, internal needs. — George Mikes

hippocampus damage on a national scale can be measured by the number of guns owned by a country's citizens. According to The Washington Post, the U.S. has the highest per capita gun ownership in the world - nearly 90 guns for every 100 people - and the highest rate of gun-related murders in the developed world.4 The hippocampus senses danger lurking behind every tree. — Alberto Villoldo

A highly developed country of the past, in an advanced state of decay). — Shashi Tharoor

Reflecting this difference is the Indian state of Kerala. Although it is one of the poorer parts of the country, it has higher literacy and greater gender equality than much of the rest of India. Without resorting to a coercive approach such as a "one-child policy" Kerala has achieved a rate of population growth lower than China's and also lower than that in some developed countries, including — Peter Singer

You got warlords still running free, but yet you want a stable Liberia. You got puppets as leaders still signing off Liberia's resources to foreigners, but yet you want a developed Liberia. They are threat to a progressive Liberia. — Henry Johnson Jr

Here's the truth. The proposed top rate of income tax is not 50 per cent. It is 50 per cent plus 1.5 per cent national insurance paid by employees plus 13.3 per cent paid by employers. That's not 50 per cent. Two years from now, Britain will have the highest tax rate on earned income of any developed country. — Andrew Lloyd Webber

For a long time I felt that FDR had developed many thoughts and ideas that were his own to benefit this country, the United States. But, he didn't. Most of his thoughts, his political ammunition, as it were, were carefully manufactured for him in advance by the Council on Foreign Relations - One World Money group. Brilliantly, with great gusto, like a fine piece of artillery, he exploded that prepared "ammunition" in the middle of an unsuspecting target, the American people, and thus paid off and returned his internationalist political support. — Curtis Bean Dall

France has the least social mobility of any developed country. The social elevator no longer works. It's broken. — Xavier Niel

Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)? I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that ... I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. — Lawrence Summers

The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with. Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats, etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats developed cancer. — Dave Barry

America is the one rich country with the biggest slums, the least democratic and least developed health system, and the most niggardly attitude against its old people. — Gunnar Myrdal

In the bad sixties, when drugs came into widespread use among adolescents and when Scarsdale mothers developed the habit of not asking about each others children for fear of what they'd hear, one knew that they were speaking-or not speaking, keeping their unhappy silence-on behalf of stricken motherhood everywhere in the country. — Diana Trilling

We acknowledge-now with President Obama-that we have made mistakes in the United States, and we along with other developed countries have contributed most significantly to the problem we face with climate change. — Hillary Clinton

The truths which are represented in England and Western countries generally, are those which refer to force of character, earnestness of purpose, conscientious strictness, noble charity, practical duty, whilst the truths which I find peculiarly developed in India - developed to a greater extent than anywhere else, - and in the Eastern countries generally, are those which have reference to sweetness of communion, sweetness of temper, meekness and resignation unto God. — Keshub Chandra Sen

Per capita availability of good, potable water is diminishing in all developed and developing countries. — Marq De Villiers

Trade justice for the developing world and for this generation is a truly significant way for the developed countries to show commitment to bringing about an end to global poverty. — Nelson Mandela

On the country has gathered the idea of a natural way of life: of peace, innocence, and simple virtue. On the city has gathered the idea of an achieved centre of learning, communication, light. Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation. A contrast between country and city, as fundamental ways of life, reaches back into classical times. — Raymond Williams

Capitalism is chronically unstable.Boom and bust has always marked capitalism in the United States. There were panics in 1785, 1791, 1819, 1857, 1869, 1873, 1907, 1929 and 1987.In economies and politics, as in war, an astonishing number of people die, like the man on the railway crossing, defending their right of way. This is a poorly developed instinct in Switzerland. No country so firmly avows the principles of private enterprise but in few have the practical concessions to socialism been more numerous and varied. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I'm still terrified of flying. I really have to get drunk to fly. I've found that I've developed fears I never had before ... fears of heights, claustrophobia ... only in cities, though, never in the country. — Jimmy Page

What is urgently needed is a bold new move from a consumer economy to a conserver economy in all of the developed countries, and particularly in the United States. — Richard J. Foster

If the space travel is at the top of a country's agenda, that country is surely a very developed one! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

In this country, we were not into detail. Europe developed detail." "Why do you think that is?" "Weather. The whole history of England consists of finding things to do out of the weather. Which tells you why Russia was even worse. That's why Russian novels have 182 characters: bad weather. — Ken Jennings

When outsiders stare into the void that is today's North Korea, they think of remote villages of Africa or Southeast Asia where the civilizing hand of electricity has not yet reached. But North Korea is not an undeveloped country; it is a country that has fallen out of the developed world. You can see the evidence of what once was and what has been lost dangling overhead alongside any major North Korean road - the skeletal wires of the rusted electrical grid that once covered the entire country. — Barbara Demick

As it enters the twenty-first century, the United States is not fundamentally a weak economy, or a decadent society. But it has developed a highly dysfunctional politics. An antiquated and overly rigid political system to begin with - about 225 years old - has been captured by money, special interests, a sensationalist media, and ideological attack groups. The result is ceaseless, virulent debate about trivia - politics as theater - and very little substance, compromise, and action. A "can-do" country is now saddled with a "do-nothing" political process, designed for partisan battle rather than problem solving. By every measure - the growth of special interests, lobbies, pork-barrel spending - the political process has become far more partisan and ineffective over the last three decades. — Fareed Zakaria

A developed country is one that allows all its citizens to enjoy a free and healthy life in a safe environment — Kofi Annan

Thanks to the scientific method, most people in "developed" countries have an outlook of mild deism. We assume things like weather and disease operate according to fixed natural laws. Every so often, though, problems impinge on us so directly that we stretch beyond that mildly deistic stance and ask God to intervene. When a drought drags on too long, we pray for rain. When a young mother gets a diagnosis of cervical cancer, we solicit prayers for her healing. We beseech God as if trying to talk God into something God otherwise might not want to do. — Philip Yancey

California has often led the country, indeed the world, in the technology, consumption, trends, lifestyles, and of course, mass entertainment. It is where the car found its earliest and fullest expression, where suburbs blossomed, where going to gym replaced going to church, where forces that lead so many to assume that direct democracy is the wave of the future - declining political parties, telecommuting, new technology, the internet generation 0 are all most well developed in this vast land. — Fareed Zakaria

My biggest frustration so far is the fact that this society has not been willing to take some basic steps to keep guns out of the hands of people who can do just unbelievable damage. We're the only developed country on Earth where this happens ... And it happens once a week. And it's a one-day story ... The country has to do some soul-searching on this. — Barack Obama

I have a lot of respect for countries where the practice of democracy is highly developed. I think, however, that each country has to have its own specific features of democracy. — Mohammed VI Of Morocco

Canada, the United States and Mexico, we developed these energy reserves that we have in this North American region. And you can see a not only driving down the cost of electricity but a major manufacturing boom in this country. Couple that with tax policy, reduction, reducing the corporate tax rate, and that I think a renaissance in manufacturing like we've never seen in this country and really drive the economy. — Rick Perry

North Korea is not an undeveloped country; it is a country that has fallen out of the developed world. — Barbara Demick