“Doing something that has never been done before is terrifying… all the people who love you will tell you not to do it… not because they're jealous, but because they're genuinely scared for you… they're worried for your wellbeing. If you venture outside that wall, you are really somebody who has traded security and certainty for freedom and risk.”
— Jim McKelvey
Co-Founder of Square & Mobile Payment Pioneer

The quote archive

Wisdom in fragments

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

This crisis is rooted in the collective delusion that burnout is the necessary price we must pay for accomplishment and success. Recent scientific findings make it clear that this couldn't be less true. Performance is actually improved when our lives include time for renewal.

— Arianna Huffington

Co-Founder of The Huffington Post & Wellness Advocate

Cancer cells grow faster, adapt better. They are more perfect versions of ourselves.

— Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and physician specializing in cancer biology

If we, as a species, are the ultimate product of Darwinian selection, then so, too, is this incredible disease that lurks inside us.

— Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and physician specializing in cancer biology

To confront cancer is to encounter a parallel species, one perhaps more adapted to survival than we are. This image- of cancer as our desperate, malevolent, contemporary doppelganger- is so haunting because it is at least partly true.

— Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and physician specializing in cancer biology

Cancer, we now know, is a disease caused by the uncontrolled growth of a single cell. This growth is unleashed by mutations- changes in DNA that specifically affect genes that incite unlimited cell growth. In a normal cell, powerful genetic circuits regulate cell division and cell death. In a cancer cell, these circuits have been broken, unleashing a cell that cannot stop growing.

— Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and physician specializing in cancer biology

One you have to get a unique insight. It starts there. Two, you need to be prepared to devote a lot of energy and commitment.

— Steve Ballmer

Former CEO of Microsoft & Owner of Los Angeles Clippers

Small companies will get an idea and try to scale up. Big companies have to decide when to extend, when to extend and scale, and when to do something new. They need to build capabilities in terms of insight and execution to do the new thing.

— Steve Ballmer

Former CEO of Microsoft & Owner of Los Angeles Clippers

The most important thing a leader has to have is an idea on where they want to go and the ability to bring people with them. Most discussion about leadership is about styles and characteristics, but the most important thing is having a clear sense — and a right sense — of where you want to go.

— Steve Ballmer

Former CEO of Microsoft & Owner of Los Angeles Clippers

Never was wealth the driver for me. – it was always hey, there's a cool idea here, let's make something of it. It was nice to be well rewarded, but the interesting part was working the problem, thinking about new things and how to bring them forward from being ideas to being products or new ways of doing things.

— Steve Ballmer

Former CEO of Microsoft & Owner of Los Angeles Clippers

British identity is profoundly tied-up with Europe and vice-versa.

— Brendan Simms

Historian specializing in German history and British foreign policy

For over 40 years however, we've fostered trade and investment relationships because we're in the EU. A lot of investment has flowed into the UK because we're in the EU; Nissan in the North-East, Toyota in the Midlands and other prospective investors such as Hitachi.

— Andrew Sentance

Former Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee Member & Economist

Economic integration doesn't remove a country's identity, far from it… rather the range of products, services, instruments and intellectual processes available increases. You keep what you have and add things from abroad. This is not reducing identity, but expanding it.

— Catherine Mann

It's differences in tastes and preferences, resources and technology together with ways of thinking (manifesting in managerial and design differences) which are the reasons countries benefit when they trade with each other in goods, services, finance and labour.

— Catherine Mann

The EU needs reform. Countries have transferred jurisdiction over legislations to a centre that makes decisions in somewhat of a vacuum, featuring a European Parliament that cannot itself initiate legislation. We have a paradox therefore where national parliaments give certain powers to the centre, without being compensated through the creation of an essential federal sovereignty.

— Yanis Varoufakis

Greek Finance Minister during eurozone debt crisis negotiations

We were approaching the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society.

— Marshall McLuhan

Media Theorist Who Predicted the Digital Age & Global Communication

The last century has witnessed a radical transformation in the entire human environment, largely as a result of the impact of the mathematical and physical sciences upon technology.

— Lewis Mumford

Influential American historian, philosopher, and social critic of technology and urbanism