Wisdom in fragments

You have this very activist sociology rather than a dispassionate or objective sociology informing a broadly humanist framework of caring about flourishing versus suffering. When your sociology has decided that the point of studying society is to change it, you've got a problem.

Mathematician & Scholar of Critical Theory Criticism & Academic Discourse

Critical theories give proposed solutions to legitimate problems that could not possibly be more open to manipulation and grift. The manipulators and grifters have filled the vacuum to the point where they're only ones who can benefit.

Mathematician & Scholar of Critical Theory Criticism & Academic Discourse

Critical narratives are centered on the idea of moral complicity in these evils and use very sophisticated rhetorical ways to get people to feel that guilt and to believe in their complicity. They use very obscure language that involves a lot of double-meaning and multiple-meaning to words so that people it confronts feel stupid.

Mathematician & Scholar of Critical Theory Criticism & Academic Discourse

Romance and suspense are consistently the number 1 selling genres in the world, but don't forget even suspense can have romance – it's a huge genre. The part of the genre that has been ignored is female forward romance. Most of the decision-makers in film have been men, and that's now changing as more female filmmakers get out there.

Producer and Director, known for Tesla and SpaceX documentaries

I was 5 years old when I went to see it and when I came back, I remember thinking 'that's exactly what I'm going to do, I want to be a film-maker, I want to make people disappear, reappear, sing on screen and make beautiful love story.' That was the moment I decided, and I haven't looked back since.

Producer and Director, known for Tesla and SpaceX documentaries

The greatest film-makers have an ability to work beyond the genre. Kubrick, Scorsese and even the great Ford who made Westerns, but transcended them. There's something about the vision of these film-makers that can use the supporting framework of a genre but create something which appeals to a wider story and audience.

Director of Bourne action films and political thrillers

You don't pick an aesthetic in abstract – you need to have a core point, a core reason to make a film, and the form of aesthetic springs from that necessity. Everything has to relate to that core intention.

British Filmmaker Known for Social Realist Films & Political Advocacy

I think it's always good to find a film which is a question and an answer. It's hard to do – and often, when you've already decided the answer before you make the film, you'll find the film is less successful. In a funny way- if you can frame your question accurately as something that you don't know the answer to- and use the film as a way of finding the answer- you'll get a more complex and engaging film.

Director of Bourne action films and political thrillers

The world simply cannot manage Covid-19 without international cooperation around the production and distribution of medical equipment, research and distribution of a vaccine, and the cooperation between economies needed to ensure that we all return to growth.

Director of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University

There's a tension amongst the countries who belong to, and who have led, international organisations. Are they there to solve problems which no country can alone solve? Or – are they there to impose one particular view of the world on the rest of the world?

Director of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University

For large corporations, globalization opened up opportunities without the correlate responsibilities which usually travel with that- so things that banks must do at home they didn't have to do abroad. This took globalization out of balance, into a vicious cycle – and we're now dealing with the consequences of that.

Director of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University

When individual countries hit a crisis, they've got 2 options, they can either look after themselves (at the cost of their neighbours) or they can create rules which they (and everyone else) will abide by, which requires institutions.

Director of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University

Empowerment means we are able to sustain hope in a situation that may – to many outsiders – look hopeless.

British Labour Politician & Former Foreign Secretary

The gap between the situation of people caught in conflict and the rest of us is growing, not narrowing. The gap is not going to be narrowed by trying to change the words on paper, we have to live up to them.

British Labour Politician & Former Foreign Secretary

When you empower people economically, your social programmes go further. When you join economic empowerment to social protection, you get double the benefit and thus there is a very hard-headed reason to support livelihoods not just lives.

British Labour Politician & Former Foreign Secretary

The displacement that people face is now over generations not just years. The old model was to keep people alive until they go home. That model is broken, less than 3% of the world's refugees went home last year.

British Labour Politician & Former Foreign Secretary