Understanding truly why a failure occurred and making peace with it is the first step to being able to move-forward- it allows you to identify where the gaps where in you and your enterprise, and hopefully will give you insights into where you need more support, education and attention.

The traditional sources of capital for ideas — investment, charity, rich relatives, grants — are nowhere near sufficient to the number of good ideas in the world. Now, the internet has democratized this, and you don't need to be wealthy to be a patron. You can help bring something to life with $10 because you like the project, not because you see it as a financial return.

Until about 70,000 years ago, humans were just another kind of animal. They weren't particularly important. Their impact on the world was not greater than that of jellyfish, fireflies, or woodpeckers. However, 70,000 years ago humans evolved new cognitive abilities that turned them into the most powerful force on the planet.

Six years ago, I got a phone call in Boston, an investor asked me what I thought about cultured meat? ..my answer was that it's probably one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard in my life.!

You have this very activist sociology rather than a dispassionate or objective sociology informing a broadly humanist framework of caring about flourishing versus suffering. When your sociology has decided that the point of studying society is to change it, you've got a problem.

As far back as we know, humans have spent a lot of energy making what I call 'pointless, precious things.' Archaeologists recently uncovered a life-size sculpture of a bison, 14,000 years old, in a cave in France. That must have taken real effort by people likely living a Palaeolithic lifestyle. That's part of why we've been so dominant on this planet.

It was visionaries with a quest for achievement who made Apollo happen, and it seems to me that now? Our sense and spirit of adventure boils down to what we can afford, and not what we can learn or achieve by doing something.

They tend to have quite a power of persuasion and dominance in person. That gets diminished when they are reduced to words on a page.

Many of us think that you should only believe things that are true, not just things that rally your coalition, sect, or tribe. That belief is by no means universal, but it is a gift of the enlightenment.

We have been interested in celebrities since the dawn of time. Jesus was the first celebrity, then the royal families. Celebrity culture exists even at a micro-level... It's human nature to be interested in the captain of the football team, the head cheerleader or who is doing what with who.

But when it comes to claims like 'pets alleviate depression,' there's really no solid evidence. In fact, the findings so far are pretty ambiguous. And in one study that found no significant overall effect, cat owners were actually more depressed than the control group.

Human beings are naturally liberal about these things, human beings are naturally in pursuit of wealth and in pursuit of love and in pursuit of pleasure. I think that happens more in the West or in developed places because it's more accepted there.