There are countries or individuals that have more power than others in the same community. This power depends on many details, most of which are very hard to see. Determining which of them is more important is even harder. So understanding Hugo's following words is very difficult: "Nothing in the world is so powerful as an idea whose time has come." Of course, the idea is important but claiming nothing is more important is incorrect. Even though an idea is the base of every action it is not the most powerful, because every idea needs realization. An idea without realization is nonsense; it is words that can do nothing.
             No one knows what would happen if the idea was the most powerful. Maybe some wise individuals would rule the world like Eduard Shevardnadze controlled Georgia. Every time before the elections he expressed his ideas about how he would make the lives of Georgians better. And every time the ideas were only words that nobody realized. If the ideas were the most powerful then Shevardnadze would be the president of Georgia even now, but fortunately appeared Saakashvili, the person who could go against the ideas of Eduard Shevardnadze. Georgians were ready to support anyone who could go against Shevardnadze and when Saakashvili (the real opposing force) appeared everyone, who could come to Tbilisi, came there and assisted Mikhail to overthrow Shevardnadze and his government.
             There was Hitler who had the idea to conquer the world, but his idea was not as powerful as the military forces of the Soviet Union. In this case, military forces appeared to be more powerful than the idea. There can be many cases in world politics where economics becomes much more important than the idea.
             The last part of Victor Hugo's phrase ("whose time has come") is interesting to discuss. Maybe under these words, he meant the developed idea, which is on the border of realization. If so, then Hugo's quote is more likely to be correct. And maybe ...