“If I may return to the biology analogy too; human beings get a lot of benefit from walking erect, but our backs and our feet are sometimes sore because we are made of parts that were put together before we could walk erect.”
— Alvin E. Roth
Nobel Prize-winning economist specializing in market design theory

The quote archive

Wisdom in fragments

A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.

Just think; our bodies are not just one single individual…. We're collections of 30-40 trillion cells that work collaboratively to create you or me. Life began 4 billion years ago on this planet as very simple prokaryotic life forms evolved into more complex individual eukaryotic life forms, multicellular life and then eventually tissues and organs.

— Peter Diamandis

Founder of X Prize Foundation & Singularity University

Our minds are not structured for the pace of rapid change that we're seeing and, increasingly, will experience. It's therefore natural that our reaction is fear and a foot on the brake, but the reality is that exponential change doesn't have a dial that you can slow down.

— Peter Diamandis

Founder of X Prize Foundation & Singularity University

Today? we're at the precipice of taking a fundamental vacation from survival where instead of worrying about tomorrow, we can decide how to spend our time. When food, energy, healthcare and education are literally free to everyone, everywhere, what will humanity do with time? What an extraordinary opportunity?

— Peter Diamandis

Founder of X Prize Foundation & Singularity University

We're heading to a world where all our energy is derived from the sun and from renewables, a world where we will have a squanderable abundance of energy. There's 6,000 times more energy hitting the surface of the Earth than we consume as a species.

— Peter Diamandis

Founder of X Prize Foundation & Singularity University

One way that we deal with the accelerating rate of change is by sort of riding on top of that tsunami of change rather than being crushed by it.

— Peter Diamandis

Founder of X Prize Foundation & Singularity University

We're living in a world of increasing, exponentially growing computational power. Technology is always on, always available, and we're now moving into the quantum computing era – these exponential technologies are enabling artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing, synthetic biology, augmented reality, blockchain and allowing these technologies to converge, creating new business models.

— Peter Diamandis

Founder of X Prize Foundation & Singularity University

Speed and pace are important – the circumstances that brought people to the table can change over time, nothing is forever, nothing is static.

— Stephen Schwarzman

Co-Founder & CEO of Blackstone, Global Investment Powerhouse

I don't think about legacy, that's just not me. I think about what we're doing new every single day, across all the different areas we're involved in.

— Stephen Schwarzman

Co-Founder & CEO of Blackstone, Global Investment Powerhouse

I believe that you have to keep asking questions, and that there's no such thing as a negative question. It's all learning.

— Stephen Schwarzman

Co-Founder & CEO of Blackstone, Global Investment Powerhouse

Everyone in a high functioning organisation is simultaneously a teacher and a student. They will have been taught by others, and will be teaching others.

— Stephen Schwarzman

Co-Founder & CEO of Blackstone, Global Investment Powerhouse

I've always felt negotiation is pretty-easy. You have to look at any situation from the perspective of all sides, and find a zone of fairness in between.

— Stephen Schwarzman

Co-Founder & CEO of Blackstone, Global Investment Powerhouse

Excellence is almost a tactile feeling – and it starts with a vision… sometimes a vision that shows you a path that's so good that it cannot not succeed.

— Stephen Schwarzman

Co-Founder & CEO of Blackstone, Global Investment Powerhouse

Everyone says, 'oh it's fine to make mistakes, it's fine to do things wrong'. But actually? making that true is really difficult.

— Sheryl Sandberg

COO of Facebook & Author of "Lean In

Adversity is happening all around us at the individual level, it's happening at a company level, it's happening at industry levels; and we can either face it and learn from it or we can pretend it's not happening. And I think that is the key.

— Sheryl Sandberg

COO of Facebook & Author of "Lean In

Resilience is the responsibility and opportunity of the community.

— Sheryl Sandberg

COO of Facebook & Author of "Lean In

We have to stop pretending that there's no adversity, or that we can't do anything about the adversity we face. We need to fix the culture of silence and ignorance surrounding bias and adversity.

— Sheryl Sandberg

COO of Facebook & Author of "Lean In