There is a famous Iraqi idiom which states that if you think your opponents can eat you for dinner, then you'd better eat them for lunch. If your opponent is too big and powerful to eat you right-now, you'd better eat them for lunch before they eat you. Commitment problems from our opponents lead us to act, and that's another reason why rational man can go to war.

The people in the advanced countries now face a choice: we can express justified horror, or we can seek to understand what may have led to the crimes. If we refuse to do the latter, we will be contributing to the likelihood that much worse lies ahead.

I think life matters because it gives meaning to the universe. Without life, the universe is devoid of meaning. We aren't the universe, but we are a vital part of it, we are what gives this universe meaning.

Much of the mistreatment of animals is due to economics; it's cheaper to raise animals for food when they're kept in a confined 'economical' way rather than letting them graze in fields. In my view, we should actually only have the free-range farms – meat would then be more expensive and more people would become vegetarian, vegan, and find alternative protein foods so that we don't cause this terrible animal suffering.

When considering the prevalence of this disease, we're speaking of 7 million diagnosed patients in the US. But how many Americans currently have the initial stages of Alzheimer's already festering in their brains? I concur with the higher estimates, suggesting around 40 million people.

When I have a bad day, that has nothing to do with the market! But how I respond to that bad day may be a reflection of a general level of discomfort about how the economy is doing and so forth. It's an out-of-bounds signal. In that sense, it's pretty unique!

It's clear to me that small businesses, particularly micro-enterprises, have been responsible for the majority of the gross job creation in the last five years… particularly through the recession.

I'm always searching for that black-swan, what is that project, or who is that artist that feels specials, and feels counter-culture. Who is that artist that feels interesting and has a bold, unapologetic point of view? That's what pulls me in- and you know what, if you find that and put the right strategy around it? You can disrupt culture.

Portugal is generally perceived as a symbol of tolerance, openness to the world and ability to interact with and serve as a bridge to different societies, cultures and religions.

Even though Brent has been successful in terms of becoming a larger and more liquid benchmark, it is the 'least worst' option.

Despite huge and on-going technological advances in electronic transactions technologies, it has remained surprisingly durable, even if its major uses seem to be buried in the world underground and illegal economy.

Any time you're in a situation where the price is 'too low'—and I put that in quotes because it might not feel low to you, sometimes things are very expensive, but there are more people who'd like to buy the thing than they have the ability to serve—that's when a hidden market will crop up.