Michael Booth Quotes

Some might argue that the reality of Nordic autonomy is that you are free ... to be Nordic. If you are a Muslim who is looking to build a mosque, or an American who wants to drive a large car, espouse your deeply held Creationist beliefs, and go shopping with your platinum card on Sunday, or even if you are English and choose to conduct yourself according to archaic forms of baroque politeness, you are likely to experience varying degrees of oppression and exclusion should you come to live in this part of the world. This is true.

To achieve authentic, sustained happiness, above all else you need to be in charge of your life, to be in control of who you want to be, and be able to make the appropriate changes if you are not.

The fund owns shares in over eight thousand companies, which effectively means that Norwegians own over 1 per cent of the world's listed companies, almost 2 per cent of Europe's and 0.7 per cent of Asia's.

When you visit a Danish company and can't tell the CEO from the office clerk, that's Viking egalitarianism at work.

EARLY ONE DARK April morning a few years ago I was sitting in my living room in central Copenhagen, wrapped in a blanket and yearning for spring, when I opened that day's newspaper to discover that my adopted countrymen had been anointed the happiest of their species in something called the Satisfaction with Life Index, compiled by the Department of Psychology at the University of Leicester.

I checked the date on the newspaper: it wasn't 1 April.

Hvad udad tabes, skal indad vindes. (What was lost without will be found within.)

Norwegian racism is always a kind of racism that is not prepared to accept it being qualified as such. Because we're the good guys, and racism is what bad people do.

This country of just over five million people now has the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. And

Perhaps Danish happiness is not really happiness at all, but something much more valuable and durable: contentedness, being satisfied with your lot, low-level needs being met, higher expectations being kept in check.

a country can be too small, too socially knitted, too tightly tied for its own good. Strong social networks can, in certain circumstances, turn to incestuous corruption and the shutting down of democratic discourse. You

They are funny, too. And not always intentionally, either, which as far as I am concerned is the very best kind of funny.

The Swedish system is best understood not in terms of socialism, but in terms of Rousseau," he continued. "Rousseau was an extreme egalitarian and he really hated any kind of dependence--depending on other people destroyed your integrity, your authenticity-- therefore the ideal situation was one where every citizen was an atom separated from all the other atoms.... The Swedish system's logic is that it is dangerous to be dependent on other people, to be beholden to other people. Even to your family.

Everything I read about the Swedish Social Democratic government of the last century suggested an organization that was driven by one single, overarching goal: to sever the traditional, some would say natural, ties between its citizens, be they those that bound children to their parents, workers to their employers, wives to their husbands, or the elderly to their families.

Proper, deep, enduring joy usually requires a remarkable facility for denial, something which the Danes have in spades.

Swedes don't like to ask favors of each other: they keep their problems to themselves and suffer in silence. Being duktig is one facet of this: if you are duktig then you don't need any help, and as duktighet is the ultimate ideal for Swedes; to ask for help - or even to give it - is a kind of low-level social taboo.

In Sweden, self-sufficiency and autonomy is all; [interpersonal] debt of any kind, be it emotional, a favor, or cash, is to be avoided at all cost. The Swedes don't even like to owe a round of drinks.