Wisdom in fragments

We are meaning driven – it's not enough for us to what there is, we need to know why.

Clinical Psychologist, Author of "12 Rules for Life," Public Intellectual

We are hard wired through our biology to understand: what there is, what to do about what there is, that there is a difference between knowing what there is and knowing what to do about what there is and what the difference is.

Clinical Psychologist, Author of "12 Rules for Life," Public Intellectual

The world can be validly construed as a forum for action, or as a place of things. It is this distinction between the physical (a place of things) and metaphysical (a forum for action) that typifies the difference, as far as we are aware, between us and other species.

Clinical Psychologist, Author of "12 Rules for Life," Public Intellectual

Not in our wildest dreams did we ever think Infosys could grow as big as it did. This was a different world, a different era.

Co-Founder and Former CEO of Infosys, Indian IT Pioneer

When a customer sees that a company from India is performing in the financial markets better than their local partner, their attention is caught. We leveraged the financial markets for building brand, for competing in the marketplace.

Co-Founder and Former CEO of Infosys, Indian IT Pioneer

We are first generation entrepreneurs, with middle class values, coming from middle class backgrounds, we never expected to be so wealthy! Our first reaction therefore is to share.

Co-Founder and Former CEO of Infosys, Indian IT Pioneer

Scaling any business is about creating a model, debugging the model, making sure you understand the ingredients that need to be scaled up, and making sure you have a process to scale. All of this needs to be wrapped-up in a financial model that allows the scale to be funded.

Co-Founder and Former CEO of Infosys, Indian IT Pioneer

We cannot use the existing models of development, because those existing models have brought us pollution, disparity of income, and significant challenge. Consumption-led economic development has been the narrative of the 20th century.

Co-Founder and Former CEO of Infosys, Indian IT Pioneer

I have way too often felt like 'the other.' Even in my motherland, I did not quite fit in. I never did. This is partly because I was born in France, Strasbourg. After my parents separated, my father stayed in France and remarried.

Turkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love

I am a nomad—intellectually, physically, spiritually. A commuter, in the words of James Baldwin. This state of continuous exile is one that I find difficult to explain to other people but it's who I am.

Turkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love

When I say books can save us; books can be our dear friends, our amazing teachers, our loyal companions of the road, I really mean it, because it happened to me.

Turkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love

To me literature was, and still is, an existential need. Books and stories have been that gateway for me. I wanted to find a gate to an 'elsewhere', to another land, a Storyland.

Turkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love

I started writing fiction because I was lonely. I was an only child, a solitary child, raised by a single working mother, which was very unusual at the time in Turkey. Literature gave me a sense of continuity, coherence; it kept my pieces together. It helped me to connect even when I felt like I didn't quite belong.

Turkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love

I don't think there is anything about putting your country first that requires you to turn your back on the rest of the world. If anything, the opposite is true.

Co-Founder of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Health Advocate

We like to think of data as being objective, but the answers we get are often shaped by the questions we ask. When those questions are biased, the data is, too.

Co-Founder of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Health Advocate

It's amazing how little data the world has about women and girls. There are even gender gaps in the data we use to measure gender gaps.

Co-Founder of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Health Advocate