“What is obvious is that the first reason people use drugs is that they're there. You can't use drugs unless they're there, and they're cheap for your pocket or for the fruits of your stealing! For that reason, we need to get a deeper understanding of the fundamental question of why drugs are available on our streets.”
— Prof. Griffith Edwards
Pioneer of addiction medicine and alcohol dependence research; founded modern addiction psychiatry

The quote archive

Education

A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.

When you're blending digital and physical, you'd better know how things are made. When I talk to my students it's shocking how few of them have ever been to a factory, and how few of them know what a CNC machine is or how goods get from A to B efficiently.

— Robert E. Siegel

NPR Host and Senior News Correspondent for Over Three Decades

You can almost think of it like three sock puppets! You, this little chimp, and a computer, trying to run your life.

— Steve Peters

Psychiatrist and author of "The Chimp Paradox

Super-specialisation at the expense of a breadth of knowledge is a modern-day fallacy. Fundamentally, we need to be able to address facts in an unbiased fashion. If you're super-specialised in one particular area, at the expense of that breadth, at the expense of clarity of vision, it is natural you will accumulate biases that will factor into your decision making.

— Noor ul Owase Jeelani

We've had a collective gap of imagination around economic bridges. Lincoln used the government as a battering ram to bring opportunity to those left behind. The country was modernising, industrialising, and Lincoln wanted to empower people. We did that. Franklin Roosevelt did it with the GI Bill. We know how to build bridges; we just don't build them.

— Glenn Hubbard

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

Birds are not born with an innate genetically determined knowledge of constellations. What they do has been brilliantly shown in an experiment by Stephen Emlen. Birds learn when they're young to look at this night sky and learn which bits of the sky don't rotate.

— Richard Dawkins

Evolutionary Biologist & Author of "The Selfish Gene

It is impossible to have the World Bank type of policy that is saying one policy fits all – educate your population, adopt better institutions, adopt family planning, and this will be the rescue. On the contrary, resources are limited, and we need to target the elements that are creating hurdles in the development of each country.

— Oded Galor

Economist known for unified growth theory explaining long-term economic development

Over this 99.9% of human existence, when technology advances, population advances and counterbalances any potential increase in human prosperity. Suddenly once technological progress reaches a tipping point, families start to invest in education, they economise on the number of children, and technological progress is converted into richer people rather than into more people.

— Oded Galor

Economist known for unified growth theory explaining long-term economic development

Numerous studies including recent ones from Stanford and Harvard Universities show that young girls, by the age of six, in the U.S. feel they are less intellectually capable than boys. Why? Because when they open a history book, they are predominantly exposed to male innovators.

— Dr. Nina Ansary

Most leaders are running human organisations, not financial organisations. This means they need to understand how to motivate, inspire and organise people first rather than capital first. This requires a set of skills that traditionally have not been taught in business schools.

— Alan Murray

Editor of Fortune Magazine & Wall Street Journal columnist

Gender identity drives self-socialization. People think adults socialise their children, but children socialise themselves. We see the same process in the Great Apes. Young females imitate their mother – and copy the diet and tool techniques of their mothers much more reliably than the young males do.

— Frans de Waal

Primatologist & behavioral psychologist who studies animal cognition and emotions

We are definitely seeing a shift in the skillsets that are needed. On our platform here at Udemy, we are seeing a lot more people taking courses around empathy and emotional intelligence and coaching. How do you ask the right questions? How do you enquire? How do you actively listen?

— Melissa Daimler

I continue to go back to that same economically depressed neighbourhood that I grew up in, in the Bronx. I tell these people that I was them, 60 years ago, and they can be me as they continue their journey. I hope to continue shining that path and encouraging others as they pursue their own dreams.

— Reggie Fils-Aimé

Former President of Nintendo of America, led iconic console era

Education exponentially multiplies advancements in every other sector. And critically, it empowers communities with the skills to shape their own futures, build their own economies, and advocate for their own rights.

— Nadia Murad

Nobel Peace Prize Winner & Yazidi Genocide Survivor Advocate

Education attenuates conspiracism such as those without a high school diploma are twice as likely to believe conspiracy theories than people with a graduate degree. But 1 in 5 people with a graduate degree believe in conspiracy theories, which is 20% – that is a high number.

— Michael Shermer

Founder of The Skeptics Society & Science Communicator

If you know something, and if the reason you're confident is that I told you that thing? That means I wasn't a good educator at that moment because you decided that based on some authority figure, something is real, or true. Instead, an educator should teach you how to think about a problem – how to come to some form of understanding.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

Renowned Astrophysicist & Director of Hayden Planetarium