“I always thought that nothing or no one should stop me from doing what I like. If you have a passion for questions, and if you have the courage, then you don't need a model that is exactly like yourself.”
— May-Britt Moser
Neuroscientist; Nobel Prize for discovering brain's positioning system cells

The quote archive

Wisdom in fragments

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

There is nothing, however, in standard theories of money that requires transactions to be anonymous from tax- or law-enforcement authorities. And yet there is a significant body of evidence that a large percentage of currency in most countries, generally well over 50%, is used precisely to hide transactions.

— Kenneth Rogoff

Economist & Harvard Professor; Former IMF Chief Economist

Paying a negative interest rate on currency, or on electronic reserves at the central bank, may seem barbaric to some... But it is arguably no more barbaric than inflation, which similarly reduces the real purchasing power of currency.

— Kenneth Rogoff

Economist & Harvard Professor; Former IMF Chief Economist

Money is a cultural abstract. It is the social, cultural and legal consensus of what a given society- at a given time- considers as being money.

— Kenneth Rogoff

Economist & Harvard Professor; Former IMF Chief Economist

...in the long-term, random investment strategies provide gains comparable to those seen where technical strategies are applied.

— Researchers

....by preventing extreme price variations, random investments [we] also help to identify the equilibrium price.

— Researchers

...adoption of random strategies diminishes the probability of extreme events (in this case large capital increases or great losses) but also ensures almost the same average wealth over a long time period, at variance with other technical strategies...

— Researchers

...in situations of high uncertainty, personal information exchange may reach market-wide impacts, as the examples of bank runs and speculative attacks on national currencies show.

— Researchers

To break into the chain, you would have to amass 25,000 of the world's fastest supercomputers. That seems completely infeasible. This is one of the big advantages of BitCoin – the ledger is practically unhackable.

— Prof. Campbell Harvey

Duke Finance Professor & Co-Developer of Campbell Harvey Market Timing Model

Let's not forget that currencies today are based on good will not gold reserves.

— Kate Craig-Wood

Unlike real money, they are decentralised and transactions are free; no bank in the middle taking their slice and nothing central to fail.

— Kate Craig-Wood

Crypto-currency is a means by which people can exchange property in a secure way without the use of a central institution like a bank or the Federal Reserve.

— Prof. Campbell Harvey

Duke Finance Professor & Co-Developer of Campbell Harvey Market Timing Model

The complexity of the topic combined with significant political and social blindness towards it, has led to disability becoming one of the most significant un-addressed issues of modern time.

— Javed Abidi

Disability Rights Activist & Founder of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People

Disability – rather than being something looked upon as a 'condition', is really a phenomenon that occurs at a complex intersection between our humanity, policy, society, culture and the environment.

— Javed Abidi

Disability Rights Activist & Founder of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People

Human beings can become impaired through physical, mental or sensory limitations; but that does not become a disability until that impairment stops them from participating in community life.

— Javed Abidi

Disability Rights Activist & Founder of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People

It is the difference between an investor asking, 'so, what's your product…' and 'so, what's your idea, and what steps can we take to turn that into a product.'

— William R. Kerr

Viewing entrepreneurship as experimentation allows individuals and societies to evaluate businesses and technologies in domains with greater uncertainty than otherwise possible, unlocking deep growth opportunities.

— William R. Kerr