Paul Collier

• 
  To date, democracy in the societies of the bottom billion has increased political violence instead of reducing it.
• Democracy had the opposite effect in poor countries to that in rich countries.
• A high-income society that featured democracy was found to be safer, while a low-income society that featured democracy was found to be more “dangerous”, in this instance meaning more “assassinations, riots, political strikes, and guerrilla activity”, as well as the possibility of a full-fledged civil war.
• Let me be clear: we cannot rescue them. The societies of the bottom billion can only be rescued from within. In every society of the bottom billion there are people working for change, but usually they are defeated by the powerful internal forces stacked against them.
• 
  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.
• 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.