From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
The first thing to do for our ecology is not to use less electricity, it's to cease buying things that are not useful.
The French Revolution really is this incredible hinge in the story of Western political thought. For a long time, it was just taken for granted that the French Revolution was the starting point of political modernity.
We are one big, beautiful, dysfunctional and incredible family, tearing itself apart over something as inconsequential as our hue.
During the twentieth century we saw consumption boom beyond the planets natural limits, beyond what the planet is capable of sustaining. Everything is connected, forest destruction is a major cause of global warming, climate change.
In the Fourth Generation war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting non-state opponents such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Almost everywhere, the state is losing.
Our singular filter is to find the people, projects and opportunities that we think are going to be game-changing for humanity. If you succeed at doing that, you'll make plenty of money (even if you fail half the time).
Looking back, I am now firmly convinced that young people are the most potent forces for social change. However, our initial focus on this demographic wasn't a calculated decision but rather a matter of convenience—these were the people I had direct access to.
Roughly 100 countries in the world have already eliminated malaria (most of them since the Second World War). Of the 100 countries in the world that still have endemic malaria, 39 are in the process of eliminating while the remaining 61 are making steady progress.
If history has taught us anything, it's that women rarely win anything without a fight!
For the last 50, 100 even 200 years, almost all of the world's problems have been solved by a relatively small group of white men- and now we're bringing diversity to the challenge; we're opening out the future of our world to several billion people not just a few hundred million, and with that level of entrepreneurial thinking capacity I would see our civilisation growing exponentially, and that gives me hope.
I'm extremely proud of the fact that we have driven social and cultural change. I have always wanted women to be empowered, and we've given them that opportunity.
Imagine Martin Luther King walked into your foundation. Would he pass muster? He would not get a dime out of most contemporary foundations because he would say, 'honestly? This work will take years, people are going to die, I'm not sure how it will turn out.'