They tried every nasty trick to stop us. And it was only the power of the press that rescued us.
— Michael Bates“A complex system is one where the properties of the building blocks, when they interact, can create phenomena that are very different from the building blocks themselves. The human brain is a great example. You take a neuron, which is a cell – you put an electrochemical signal in, electrochemical signal comes out – but somehow you hook 80 billion of them together and you get a brain. You have to hook them together just right, of course, but the result is completely fundamentally different than what you started with.”— J. Doyne Farmer
Complexity scientist & founding director of Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Economics program
The quote archive
History
A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.
They would open every tin of beans or whatever was going out there, just in case there was something inside that shouldn't be.
— Michael BatesThere is a very strong case that we have had this kind of non-human intelligence, which has been worshipped or depicted as gods, for thousands of years.
— Jonathan Caplan KCGeography has a big effect on long-term, large-area history, whereas leaders have a big effect on short-term, small-area history.
— Jared DiamondHe was born at the right time. He was born at the right place. If he had been born 20 years earlier and 200 miles to the south, nobody would ever have known about Genghis Khan.
— Jared DiamondThere is hardly any positive democratic thinking in the European tradition until probably the twentieth century. It really took the First World War to get Europeans to start thinking along those lines. So it is quite recent. I think we need to understand just how fragile it is.
— Anthony KaldellisThe things we take for granted the most — the ones we discuss the least — are sometimes the ones most deeply embedded in the infrastructure of our thought.
— Anthony KaldellisUntil the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the economy had been measured in tonnes of grain and steel, and because of the crash- economists and politicians decided they wanted some grip over the scale of output of the economy- so they turned to a brilliant young scientist called Simon Kuznets and asked him how they should be measuring economic output. His answer was published in 1930s- he figured out a way to add-up all the tonnes of grains and steel and create a national income figure. He gave the caveat that it would scarcely be taken as the measure of welfare of a nation because it didn't include all the value created in a community, all the unpaid caring work at home, and only measured what was sold- not what was used-up!
— Kate RaworthCreator of the Doughnut Economics framework for sustainable development