Dr. Vikas Shah MBE DL Interviews the world's leading thinkers, and the people shaping the century.

Is Humanity Defined By Its Images? In this exclusive interview series, we speak to Rankin, David Bailey CBE, Albert Watson and Peter Lik (four of the world’s greatest photographers), HRH Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands (Patron of the World Press Photo Foundation) and Professor Francis Hodgson (Co-Founder of the Pictet Prize).…

 

A Conversation with will.i.am Global Music Artist, Entrepreneur and Philanthropist “Entrepreneurship is about taking risks, pushing boundaries, and not being afraid to fail,” Sir Richard Branson told me, adding that it’s “a combination of passion, vision, creativity and a sense of adventure,” that drives entrepreneurs to do what they do….

 

A Conversation Matthew W. Barzun Ambassador of the United States of America to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Originally published in British Airways Business Life, September 2016 We often hear policy-makers talk of the ‘special-relationship’ between the United States of America and the United Kingdom, and…

 

How we can fix our broken nations, economies, societies and cultures.  In these exclusive interviews we speak to Professor Theodore Zeldin (International Best-Selling Author and Scholar), Rutger Bregman (Author, ‘Utopia for Realists’), Paul Mason (Award Winning British Journalist, Broadcaster and Author), Andy Stern (President Emeritus, Service Employees International Union) and…

 

In these exclusive interviews we talk to Dr. Vint Cerf (Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet"), Professor Robert ‘Bob’ Metcalfe (Co-inventor of the Ethernet, founder 3COM), Dr. Jeff Jaffe (CEO, W3C – The World Wide Web Consortium), Kevin…

 

Steve Ballmer served over 20 years at Microsoft.  During his tenure, the company pioneered personal computing and democratized enterprise computing, growing from a small start-up to a company that today employs more than 110,000 people, with a market capitalisation approaching $100 billion.  After retiring from this role in 2014, he…

 

In these exclusive interviews, we speak to Dr. Christopher Wild (Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, IARC - an intergovernmental agency forming part of the World Health Organisation of the United Nations), Prof. Nic Jones (Director of the Manchester Cancer Research Centre and former Chief Scientist of…

 

Explore an archive of more than 3,000 quotes.

Those cycles don't exist – that's not what history is like. Disasters keep coming along at random intervals, they are not normally distributed... That's hard for our brains to deal with… we don't like the idea that history is just a lot of random shocks without any predictable features.

— Niall Ferguson
British historian and author specializing in financial and military history

The notion of 'alternative' as an asset class sits badly with me because for me, saying hedge-funds – as an example – are an asset class is akin to comparing mutual-funds to being an asset class. The sheer diversity within these groups makes it difficult to define them as a class in their own right, given the complete lack of commonalities across the board.

Gender identity drives self-socialization. People think adults socialise their children, but children socialise themselves. We see the same process in the Great Apes. Young females imitate their mother – and copy the diet and tool techniques of their mothers much more reliably than the young males do.

— Frans de Waal
Primatologist & behavioral psychologist who studies animal cognition and emotions

More than just being a luxury item, they are pieces that represent milestone moments- that's why they're important. People also reflect on whether diamonds are a hard asset class. They are the hardest of all assets, being the hardest asset known to man!

Without quantum mechanics, we wouldn't have the modern world… we wouldn't have electronics… we wouldn't have understood the semi-conductor, the computer chip…. All of our modern technology relies on this mathematical description of the world of the very small.

— Jim Al-Khalili
Theoretical physicist, author, and BBC science communicator known for public engagement

Browse all quotes →

Long-form Interviews with the World's Leading Thinkers — Thought Economics


The Wisdom Series

Ten in-depth articles distilling insights from over 550 interviews with the world's leading thinkers, creators, and changemakers.

The Wisdom of Leadership The Wisdom of Entrepreneurship The Wisdom of Creativity The Wisdom of Technology The Wisdom of Meaning The Wisdom of the Mind The Wisdom of Justice The Wisdom of Science The Wisdom of Geopolitics The Wisdom of Health
Explore the Wisdom Series →