“The discovery of an effective HIV vaccine is the nirvana for all our efforts to prevent AIDS.”
— Sir Richard Feachem
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The quote archive

Politics

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

Online trolling and abuse is a real problem now. A lot of people who want to express an opinion now are fearful that they'll get piled-on. And there's no real immunity from it: Zadie Smith's brilliant New Yorker story 'Now More Than Ever' is really an expression of her terror of the arbitrary possibility of being judged by a moralistic internet pile-on, of being as they say cancelled.

— David Baddiel

British comedian, writer, and television personality; co-founder of Fantasy Football League

There's also of course this huge army of paid trolls (like Putin's) who can be hard to spot, but definitely there, whipping up hate and confusion just because it's part of the Russian state process to do that.

— David Baddiel

British comedian, writer, and television personality; co-founder of Fantasy Football League

Those children who are enslaved, and victims of violence, belong to those sections of society that don't have a strong political voice or who are taken for granted by politicians and elites. Most of those children therefore belong to marginalised and excluded sections of our society.

— Kailash Satyarthi

Nobel Peace Prize Winner & Child Rights Activist Against Child Labor

The rights of children are not yet acknowledged as the key driver for human progress and development and hence they are not getting priority in economic, social or political discourse.

— Kailash Satyarthi

Nobel Peace Prize Winner & Child Rights Activist Against Child Labor

These are the kinds of digital services that have been technologically available for 25 years but just haven't been implemented anywhere. Basically, for scalability all you need is more servers.

— Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Former President of Estonia & Cybersecurity Pioneer

I personally want to throw up every time I hear some completely senseless and baseless statement like 'we need more of Europe, not less'. It means nothing, and those slogans simply drive people crazy – It goes to show the intellectual vacuousness of the people who say them.

— Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Former President of Estonia & Cybersecurity Pioneer

For us, for our people, who were under communist domination, we were comfortable and happy to take on a European identity when we gained independence. Identity is something incredibly personal; and how the individual combines their national and European identity is something they do themselves.

— Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Former President of Estonia & Cybersecurity Pioneer

Portugal is generally perceived as a symbol of tolerance, openness to the world and ability to interact with and serve as a bridge to different societies, cultures and religions.

— Antonio Costa

Former Prime Minister of Portugal (2015-2024)

There are two basic underlying reasons economies slow down. Firstly dysfunctional politics and secondly economic mistakes.

— Michael Spence

Nobel Prize-winning economist; Stanford provost and NYU president

I grew up in Canada and have a lot of friends in Argentina. In the early part of the 20th Century, Argentina was wealthier and had a higher per-capita income than Canada. The country had severe governance issues which impacted economic and social development.

— Michael Spence

Nobel Prize-winning economist; Stanford provost and NYU president

Many entrepreneurs are deluded about their odds of success, that evidence is very clear. This creates problems… Should a government subsidise entrepreneurs who greatly over-estimate their chances of success?

— Daniel Kahneman

Nobel Prize Winner in Economics for Behavioral Economics Research

The current Trump–Silicon Valley consensus—that all forms of regulation somehow constrain the muscular freedom of companies to innovate—is ludicrous.

— Nick Clegg

Deputy Prime Minister of the UK (2010-2015) & Liberal Democrat Leader

One of the great ironies of a company like Meta, where I worked, is that well over 90% of its users are outside the US, yet well over 90% of the bandwidth among decision-makers is focused on what's happening in America. In the end, that just doesn't make sense.

— Nick Clegg

Deputy Prime Minister of the UK (2010-2015) & Liberal Democrat Leader

We're not just over-reliant—we're wholly reliant—on American technology across the entire stack. Our data sits in American cloud infrastructure; our hardware is American designed; our software and operating systems are overwhelmingly American; most of the AI systems people interact with are American, and so on.

— Nick Clegg

Deputy Prime Minister of the UK (2010-2015) & Liberal Democrat Leader

Politicians, by and large, don't understand technology at all, and technologists don't understand politicians—and both tend to denigrate each other. The technologists in Silicon Valley see politicians as venal, short-term, and ignorant, while politicians view technologists as rapacious capitalists who will stop at nothing to beat their rivals and lack any ethical compass.

— Nick Clegg

Deputy Prime Minister of the UK (2010-2015) & Liberal Democrat Leader

You have some smart people gaslighting us into telling us this isn't true... and that's now how history works. Those same people, when a Donald Trump figure comes onto the scene- or some other toxic force- are like who's going to save us? But they discouraged you from believing people had the power to do that.

— Ryan Holiday

Author & Stoicism Expert; Marketer & Media Strategist