“I fell in love with the process first – they sometimes call it the grind. I fell in love with movement, with training, with everything between the competitions – and falling in love with that was instrumental to me because now, when things don't go right, and I feel vulnerable or emotional, I can dip into that state.”

— Sally Fitzgibbons

Professional surfer and multiple-time world championship competitor

The quote archive

Wisdom in fragments

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

If you say 'I hate politics!' you are removing yourself from the public sphere, and are rejecting the ability to be a political subject. You are submitting yourself to a higher order, a powerful ruler.

— Ece Temelkuran

Turkish journalist, author, and political commentator known for critical writings on democracy

Once the cancer of authoritarianism gets into the veins and organs of society, it's not easy to get-out – they have this very specific way of paralysing political mechanisms and dismantling the fundamental human logic.

— Ece Temelkuran

Turkish journalist, author, and political commentator known for critical writings on democracy

Populism is the act of politicising and mobilising ignorance to the point of political and moral insanity.

— Ece Temelkuran

Turkish journalist, author, and political commentator known for critical writings on democracy

We're extraordinarily vulnerable to the functions of our heart, no other organ can cause sudden death.

— Sandeep Jauhar

Cardiologist and author of "Intern" and "Heart: A History

The heart is a fascinating machine. It beats 3 billion times in a typical human lifetime, consumes so much energy, and does so much work that if you attached a heart to a typical swimming pool – the heart would empty the pool in about a week.

— Sandeep Jauhar

Cardiologist and author of "Intern" and "Heart: A History

I grew up with a fear of the heart as an executioner of men in the prime of their lives.

— Sandeep Jauhar

Cardiologist and author of "Intern" and "Heart: A History

Growing up in Pakistan, I saw so many people with heart disease and having heart attacks – it felt almost biblical – it was catastrophic. Unlike a lot of diseases, there wasn't much a cultural footprint for heart disease – it's not something you hear about on news or TV shows.

— Haider Warraich

Cardiologist and author specializing in heart disease and public health

Even if there's no profound cultural difference between brown, black and white Britons… they speak the same language, eat the same food, abstain from going to the same churches… identity culture assigns significance to their bodily differences, and so race exists.

— Kwame Anthony Appiah

Philosopher, Cosmopolitanism Advocate & Princeton University Professor

You cannot get rid of identities, but you can reform them. You can take a form of identity that's been historically associated with repression and hierarchy, and make it more egalitarian – that's what we've been trying to do with gender.

— Kwame Anthony Appiah

Philosopher, Cosmopolitanism Advocate & Princeton University Professor

In today's United States, asking a republican parent if it was OK for their daughter to marry a democrat would elicit a response similar to asking parents years ago if their daughter could marry a black person – the polarization is astounding.

— Kwame Anthony Appiah

Philosopher, Cosmopolitanism Advocate & Princeton University Professor

Identities are useful – if you had to make everything up in your life, from the start, with no input whatsoever – that wouldn't be freedom – you'd be less free; you'd have to think constantly about what you should or should not do. There would be no structure for your life choices.

— Kwame Anthony Appiah

Philosopher, Cosmopolitanism Advocate & Princeton University Professor

Success really is a team sport. There are very few successful people who competed the journey solo, and figured out how to do everything themselves.

— Stephen A. Schwarzman