Wisdom in fragments

History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, the second as a farce. I think one of the things I have learned with history is that it's important to study it, but it will rarely give you the right answer. Quite often because there is no right answer, and what you're really looking for is to understand how you got here.

When these things happen in life, our soul calls on us to learn a lesson. Often we need pain to be able to see the light. Most of us begin our spiritual journey after a job loss or a career change.

When you embark on that spiritual journey, it's literally a series of deaths that lead to a new, more spiritual life. That part of me had to die for the spiritual part to be born.

We've been bamboozled into believing that love is found on the outside. Deep down, we're really trying to achieve peace, happiness, and love. It's not about the wealth itself; it's about what we perceive the wealth will bring into our lives.

I've done what society tells you is successful, only to feel really empty and alone inside. True success is the discovery of your authentic self—discovering who you are before any wounding, trauma, or limitations were created in your life's journey.

Too little credit and the economy can't grow, too much credit and the economy becomes unstable and we have the great financial crisis. So we need to find that proper Goldilocks point in the middle.

Complexity scientist & founding director of Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Economics program

We now have all the tools to do it. Computers are a billion times more powerful, the data is vastly better, our understanding of psychology is vastly better – we have all the elements we need now to do these things and to do them well.

Complexity scientist & founding director of Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Economics program

There's a vested interest – if the ideas you're teaching and have worked on are completely abandoned in favour of something else, then your legacy goes to zero. I think that's a big force.

Complexity scientist & founding director of Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Economics program

The standard models were formulated through a process that started well before computers were in place, and I would say it's undergone a certain lock-in. Once you start going down that path, it's hard to break out of it to another path. As a result, economics is stuck.

Complexity scientist & founding director of Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Economics program

A complex system is one where the properties of the building blocks, when they interact, can create phenomena that are very different from the building blocks themselves. You take a neuron, which is a cell – you put an electrochemical signal in, electrochemical signal comes out – but somehow you hook 80 billion of them together and you get a brain.

Complexity scientist & founding director of Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Economics program

The miracle of capitalism is that if you have a central government trying to solve something, it will come up with one averagely optimal solution for everybody. And capitalism will come up with 10 different solutions to the same problem.

Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & advertising strategist and behavioral economist

The average is the enemy of the marketer, because it actually disguises what you really need to know, which is the outliers, the unusual use cases, the anecdotal eccentricity, where most of the really valuable information lies.

Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & advertising strategist and behavioral economist

If you're simply trained in accounting or marketing, you'll never have what I call a kind of epiphany. A fantastic business stumbles onto something psychological which just gives it a fantastic edge.

Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & advertising strategist and behavioral economist

The problem with market research is that people don't think what they feel, don't say what they think, and don't do what they say.

Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & advertising strategist and behavioral economist

Whenever I write a new song with somebody, it feels like the first time. I sometimes feel embarrassed, humiliated, like I don't know what I'm doing until we find a spark. You have to dare to go to this place where, even though you've done it before, it feels like you don't know what you're looking for until you find it.

Grammy-nominated music producer and songwriter behind major pop hits

To me, writing a song is like a ball game. You bounce the ball back and forth until someone doesn't want to play anymore. When you make music, you want to make someone feel something.

Grammy-nominated music producer and songwriter behind major pop hits