"Lenin is dead." That quote in Davos summed up a planetary shift playing out this week as Donald Trump took office and China's communist leader declared himself the true guardian of globalisation.
Former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt was commenting on the irony of hearing President Xi Jinping promote free trade and open markets in Davos, a century after Vladimir Lenin was busy plotting world revolution down the road in Zurich.
Other noteworthy declarations heard at the World Economic Forum this week include -
"No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war." - China's President Xi Jinping delivers a veiled warning to the protectionist Trump in a keynote address that was met with adulation from many in the Davos crowd. The speech included references to Chinese folklore, Charles Dickens and Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
"The United Kingdom ... will step up to a new leadership role as the strongest and most forceful advocate for business, free markets and free trade anywhere in the world." - UK Prime Minister Theresa May denies Brexit means British withdrawal from the world stage, in a speech that was met with rather more reserve from the Davos audience than Xi's before.
"I was struck by people wanting to hug Xi for talking about globalisation, free trade and so on, whereas when May talked about those things, she was greeted with incredulity because we're walking away from the EU." - Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London and one of Britain's leading strategic thinkers, noting that the Davos elite remains in shocked disbelief at the Brexit vote.
"We want to have a phenomenal relationship with the Chinese. But if the Chinese really believe in globalism, and they really believe in the words of Lincoln, they have to reach now towards us and allow us to create this symmetry, because the path to globalism in the world is through the American worker and the American middle class." - Hedge-fund investor Anthony Scaramucci, the sole member of Trump's transition team who made it to Davos.
"I'm glad I'm out of office." - Former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, capturing the fear of all the uncertainty brought on by the populist backlash that has powered Trump's rise and Brexit.
"Equality is on everyone's lips here in Davos, and maybe actually equality is becoming the new black." - Swedish Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson reflecting on a key theme of this year's Davos, as the World Economic Forum tries to get to grips with the anti-elite revolt.
"We face the prospect of leaving a larger part of humanity behind than in any other (industrial) advance." - Vishal Sikka, chief executive of Indian IT services giant Infosys, warns that governments are ill-prepared as machine intelligence risks making much white-collar work obsolete.
"The world is so wonderful. Why should I be the CEO of Alibaba all the time? I don't want to die in my office. I want to die on the beaches." - Chinese internet pioneer Jack Ma, goading the Davos audience of highly paid workaholics.
"I feel like an advert for North Face." - Amnesty International chief Salil Shetty on doing endless outdoor TV interviews in distinctly un-beachlike temperatures of -15 degrees Celsius.
"People in the City of London tell me they'll be looking at Dublin, Amsterdam and on a lot of people's weighing scales, they weigh about equally," Finance Minister Michael Noonan said, on the issue of key financial companies possibly moving out of the City of London after Brexit.
