“Endurance stays with you across everything, if you do it one place, you can do it anywhere. You're able to sustain because you've already trained your brain to do that.”— David Blaine
The quote archive
A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.
Economics is like artificial intelligence, it's not really there… there's no physical invisible hand…. It's about people interacting with people against a social order, a set of ethics, principles and practices.
— Jaron LanierPioneer of Virtual Reality & Critic of Social Media
Technology isn't a 'thing,' it's a social structure that people act upon the universe through. The social structure has incentives, roles and governance which determine the meaning and effect of the technology, not the engineering itself.
— Jaron LanierPioneer of Virtual Reality & Critic of Social Media
I actually think social media can be fine, and in fact if you look at the first year or two of any particular social media, they often start out quite charming before the stupid business model kicks in where companies can only make money by having third parties inject money into the system.
— Jaron LanierPioneer of Virtual Reality & Critic of Social Media
Social media was kind-of created to destroy humanity, in a literal sense. The first notion of the implications of such networks was provided by B. F. Skinner who spoke of the dangers of people who- on networks- were too free, too creative and too uncontrolled.
— Jaron LanierPioneer of Virtual Reality & Critic of Social Media
There's no sensible definition of people without technology. Our relationship with technology is complex and helical. As technology changes over time, so do we, and we have a situation therefore where we develop technologies, adapt, and then need new technologies to solve the side-effects of the first.
— Jaron LanierPioneer of Virtual Reality & Critic of Social Media
Instead of militaries fighting militaries, we now have militaries or military motivated agents that are able to activate civilians in each other's countries. Social media is global national security threat, and one that we're not even spending billions of dollars to protect against.
— Tristan HarrisDesign ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology
If Russia or China try to fly a plane into the United States, they'll be shut down by a USAF F35. Meanwhile, if they try and fly an information plane into the United States they're met with Facebook and Google algorithms that run an auction to enable them to get the maximum audience, for the cheapest price.
— Tristan HarrisDesign ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology
Technology claims to be showing us a mirror of what was already present in society but in reality, technology is a funhouse mirror with a feedback loop that's engineered to show us the most egregious parts of society that are better at keeping our attention.
— Tristan HarrisDesign ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology
We are now 10 years into the mass warping of the human collective psyche because of a lack of checks and balances. To even begin to correct what's already happened means we have to wake up to the challenge of a world which must collectively wake-up from a mass delusion that has warped our trajectory as a civilisation.
— Tristan HarrisDesign ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology
Technology is systematically undermining human weakness, the costs are huge. This is what degrades our quality of life and how we make sense of the world. This is what destroys our ability to form identity, to form relationships and make choices.
— Tristan HarrisDesign ethicist & founder of Center for Humane Technology
The purpose of intelligence is to improve the quality of decision making by reducing ignorance. The more you know the more likely it is that a sound decision will be taken. That applies to all of us in our day-to-day decisions.
— Professor Sir David OmandFormer UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator & National Security Adviser
We wouldn't want to live in a world of full transparency. That is a world where I can see into your brain, and you into mine. We all need privacy for our thoughts, and inside government we need politicians and advisers to be able to explore ideas in private.
— Professor Sir David OmandFormer UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator & National Security Adviser
Our knowledge of the world is always fragmentary and incomplete and our explanations of how the world works have therefore to be considered as provisional. This means we have to accept that sometimes we will turn out afterwards to have been wrong.
— Professor Sir David OmandFormer UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator & National Security Adviser
In comparing alternative explanations, it is not necessarily the one with the most evidence apparently in its favour that we should choose but the one with least evidence against it. One solid piece of evidence can demolish a hypothesis.
— Professor Sir David OmandFormer UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator & National Security Adviser
Today's consumer cares about what you stand for, and so having values and purpose are central to building that trust with your customer.
— Jacqueline GoldFounder and former CEO of Ann Summers lingerie and party plan business
We need to give women the freedom and confidence to believe and be whatever they want to. This isn't just about business, but about social conditioning in all cultures.
— Jacqueline GoldFounder and former CEO of Ann Summers lingerie and party plan business