From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We have been interested in celebrities since the dawn of time. Jesus was the first celebrity, then the royal families.... It's human nature to be interested in the captain of the football team, the head cheerleader or who is doing what with who. It's human nature to be curious about those we perceive to be in elevated positions; not necessarily positions of power.
We are a society of consumers not investors. In my generation… the baby-boomers… we have believed that success is defined by materialism.
Contemporary photography is quite exploitative – and looks at people as objects in a display-case rather than as individuals with whom we have a shared common humanity, connection, and solidarity. Photography has gone from I am part of this, to look at this.
It's taken for me to get into my 30s to realise I am more than the media told me I was- I have more to say, so do my friends. We are intelligent, we are strong, we are multi-faceted, we are vulgar and we are funny.
In postmodernism, there are no absolute truths; everything is relative, of course other than the one absolute truth that there are no absolute truths. This is a form of intellectual terrorism, nihilism.
There's a culture in Silicon Valley that believes that you should be obsessive and not be able to think about anything else other than your business. You shouldn't have kids… friends… just your company as a vehicle to make millions of dollars. That's the kind of founder that many investors want to back, but we need to kick those people out.
Anti-Jewish prejudice can be likened to a reservoir of water, accumulating over time, with some elements diminishing while new ones are added. Three concepts became central: supersessionism, conspiracy theories, and the stereotype of a special, negative affinity Jews had with money.
Music is often better than speech at conveying and understanding emotion, because music has a kind of openness and ambiguity to it. Words, on the other hand, tend to put things into boxes.
When I first began, the word 'miscarriage' was so heavy on my tongue that I couldn't utter it. The sense of shame was so overwhelming. There's this societal expectation that women's bodies are designed for childbearing, yet there's a deafening silence around what to do when things don't go as planned.
We're such a 'more is better' culture and we have to redefine what we value, what creates satisfaction, and the 'currency' of our lives. In America, what are we told are the two most important things we need in life? Money and fame, baby! That's fine, but you can't chase those goals at the expense of your own character, that makes you a paper tiger, a fool.
Artists have always been part of networks; Art history is more connected than we have believed.
I have always believed in the principle that what comes easily can leave just as easily. Instead of merely 'buying' talent, which could later be 'bought' by another company, it is more impactful to create opportunities for potential talent. We need to see talent in more humanistic terms.