Wisdom in fragments

Power is the ability to affect others and get the outcomes you want – and that's true whether on the individual, national or international level. You can exert power in three ways. You can do it with coercion (sticks), you can do it with payments (carrots) and you can do it with soft power – through attraction.

Harvard Professor & Creator of "Soft Power" Concept

I believe businesses need to move away from having profit as their primary reason for existing. Profit primacy can be replaced by mission primacy.

Founder of Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform pioneer

I strongly believe that art and creative work are essential to a healthy society.

Founder of Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform pioneer

Now, the internet has democratized this, and you don't need to be wealthy to be a patron. You can help bring something to life with $10 because you like the project, not because you see it as a financial return.

Founder of Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform pioneer

The traditional sources of capital for ideas — investment, charity, rich relatives, grants — are nowhere near sufficient to the number of good ideas in the world.

Founder of Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform pioneer

Especially at the beginning, it takes just the right amount of delusion to dedicate yourself to something ambitious. The reality is you're more likely to fail than succeed and so you need strong belief to commit your heart and soul to an idea.

Founder of Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform pioneer

By keeping people feeling they are on the wrong side of history morally, or on the wrong side of the argument intellectually, and by doing so using rhetorical tricks, they are very effective at keeping people on the defensive.

Mathematician & Scholar of Critical Theory Criticism & Academic Discourse

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