Wisdom in fragments

As war ravaged Liberia, I realized it is women who bear the greatest burden in prolonged conflicts. We began organizing Christian and Muslim women to demonstrate together, launching protests and a sex strike to help oust Charles Taylor.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner & Liberian Peace Activist & Women's Rights Leader

Winning is good, losing is bad! If you're winning, you can give back — to your family, institutions of your choice, and your local communities. If you're losing, your pockets are empty.

Former CEO of General Electric; Pioneered "Jack Welch Management" Techniques

Growth is like an elixir. It's exciting, it creates more and more growth, and it's a helluva lot of fun. Business is fun, it's a game. You're playing against others, and you want to win!

Former CEO of General Electric; Pioneered "Jack Welch Management" Techniques

You must surround yourself with great people, and as you grow, never forget the generosity gene. Building a great team is what this business game is all about. The team with the best players working together wins.

Former CEO of General Electric; Pioneered "Jack Welch Management" Techniques

Establishing a culture of truth and trust is absolutely critical to being a great leader, and that takes effort and energy every day. You have to ceaselessly reach for truth and trust every day, and you have to be relentless in your pursuit of trust, and show your people that you have their back.

Former CEO of General Electric; Pioneered "Jack Welch Management" Techniques

Your corporate's social responsibility is to win. You cannot be generous from an empty wagon! This nonsense about giving when you're broke is ridiculous. Corporate responsibility, first and foremost, is to win. You can then take those resources from winning and allocate them as you see fit.

Former CEO of General Electric; Pioneered "Jack Welch Management" Techniques

In my experience, great advisors are the ones who give you the scaffolding to observe your gut-instinct from every angle and arrive at decisions which allow you to flourish.

There is no such thing as true-altruism (even philanthropists get something out of giving!). What is this individuals' payoff from working with you?

Much like whiskey, advice is best when it's of a high-quality, with provenance, and in short amounts. Have too much? And you're likely to be on the floor unable to make any good decisions.

Had the first astronauts or explorers listened to advice, chances are they would never have embarked on those world-changing adventures. The same is true of entrepreneurs. First and foremost, entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs because their gut had an insight or an idea that's driven them.

We crystallize and store knowledge in specialised sounds and language, and then play with it – build and forge and mould it and model with it – using it to grip hold of the past and to imagine and plan the future.

The brains of our ancestor Homo sapiens were the same as our brains. How to draw, how to write, how to think, have all been learned, sometimes with great difficulty, and the learning has been passed on.

Out of our cleverness has emerged something almost more important than the cleverness itself. Out of it has come learning about how to share ideas and pass down skills and knowledge. Out of it has come education.

We are the same people, physically: today, we have no additional neurons, no better wiring. But our tools for thinking – our ideas, hypotheses, theories, models – are marvellously improved. The only reason we are better at thinking and doing things now is that we accumulate knowledge and pass ideas and information from one generation to the next.

If you go to any rave, or any football event, you will find people chanting in a rhythm- human beings do that. We have this sense to participate and organise- Music lets you rediscover your humanity, and your connection to humanity. When you listen to Mozart with other people, you feel that somehow- we're all in this together.

Acclaimed film composer known for scores like The Lion King and Inception

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans- because we can… We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings… That's why we paint, that's why we dare to love someone- because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

Renowned poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist; author of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings