Philosophy

What makes SETI different today is that instead of the verb "to believe" we're trying to use the verb "to explore". We want to see what's actually out there instead of just believing what someone tells us is out there.

Pioneering astronomer & SETI Institute director searching for extraterrestrial intelligence

The iron in the haemoglobin in your blood was cooked up in the heart of a massive star that blew up about 8 billion years ago. We understand now in pretty good detail, how intimately connected we are with the cosmos.

Pioneering astronomer & SETI Institute director searching for extraterrestrial intelligence

Digital currency shows that anything can be money. We have become accustomed to see money as paper or pieces of gold, but in truth it could also be stones, grain, wood, cigarettes or complex computer codes.

There is nothing really so bad about a recession. A recession is very much an economy pausing for breath to re-evaluate where it stands and to assess where to go next.

We always think of every crisis as being somehow different and unique to us. That is human myopia. The reality is that the perennial pattern we see is universal and immemorial.

Money is a cultural abstract. It is the social, cultural and legal consensus of what a given society- at a given time- considers as being money.

Economist & Harvard Professor; Former IMF Chief Economist

Let's not forget that currencies today are based on good will not gold reserves.

Disability – rather than being something looked upon as a 'condition', is really a phenomenon that occurs at a complex intersection between our humanity, policy, society, culture and the environment.

Disability Rights Activist & Founder of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People

Human beings can become impaired through physical, mental or sensory limitations; but that does not become a disability until that impairment stops them from participating in community life.

Disability Rights Activist & Founder of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People

I use the word repugnance to describe transactions that some people would like to engage in, that other people would not like them to; it's often hard to pin-down what harm the transaction does to anyone else.

Nobel Prize-winning economist specializing in market design theory

Markets are human artefacts; however we often treat them as natural phenomenon in the same way we might treat a language. Markets are emergent phenomenon too, but individual market-places have proprietors and groups of users and therefore markets are more amenable to change. When something isn't working, we can change the rules!

Nobel Prize-winning economist specializing in market design theory

Happiness is a measure that reflects the success with which people achieve their personal objectives of living levels, happy and healthy families and satisfying work.

Economist known for the Easterlin Paradox on income and happiness

Invention has to be about the dream, there's an ingredient which you can't put in a business plan- it's intangible- but I saw it, it was there.

For the people I documented, money was secondary… They knew absolutely they would make money, but changing the world and doing cool stuff was the primary goal; that was their mission.

Stress doesn't come from what's going on in your life. It comes from your thoughts about what's going on in your life.

Don't make the mistake of confusing net worth and self-worth.