People underestimate their personal probability of encountering negative events. It is not so much that individuals believe that negative events will not happen, but rather that these events are relatively unlikely to happen to them.

An appreciation of entropy is necessary to grasp that we are not entitled to wellbeing, progress, comfort, or health. The forces of the universe are- at best, indifferent- at worse, antipathetic- to our interests. Left to their own devices, things get worse.

In a society where everything is for sale, life is harder for those of modest means. The more money can buy, the more affluence (or the lack of it) matters.

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.

When you have an unlimited view into every awful thing that's happening in the world, as well as every minor thing, you can become paralysed. It's hard to know what to spend time and energy on.

The things that get rewarded in those systems are things that provoke, divide and drive outrage – so we end up with a broken media economy that drives us all crazy and doesn't represent the best version of ourselves – that doesn't help us come to a common understanding of truth.

Unlike the common societal and professional desire to dismiss these responses as merely negative—viewing depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts as things to eliminate—I believe we should examine them more closely. How is drinking serving you? When we shift from judging to listening, people start to understand.

We have come to consider children as either being exploited or subject to charity; we hardly ever consider them as the equal human beings they are, born with certain inalienable rights. We must strengthen our notion of children's rights within our cultures and societies.

In our culture, particularly in the last 300-500 years in Western culture, people have become much more ambivalent to ecstatic experiences. The idea of losing control is seen as dangerous and shameful... We're a culture that's very much about individual autonomy, and ecstasy is the opposite of that – it's about surrendering control.

The essence of the evolving global economic system is that all countries are dependent on one another in some way, and this includes finance. Emerging and developing countries are dependent on capital inflows from developed regions. But developed regions are also dependent on funds from the developing world!

I think the people who are larger or those who have more resources like to think they're the ones who have greater power… and they have benefited from that illusion.

I am hopeful that we, in Western countries, are on the path towards a post-homophobic society. I was very gratified a couple of years ago to see a survey of 16-24 year olds. When asked about their own sexuality, 49% said they would not define themselves as 100% straight.