Society

I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.

U.S. Representative from Texas; known for controversial statements

More than just being a luxury item, they are pieces that represent milestone moments- that's why they're important.

We've transformed HIV from a death sentence to a manageable chronic condition, but prevention remains our greatest challenge. We need to reach the most vulnerable populations with the tools we have.

The virus doesn't discriminate, but our response to it has. We've seen how stigma and discrimination have fueled this epidemic more than the virus itself ever could.

The human species is different now to thirty years ago, we have an electronic extension to our DNA that gives so many distractions, so much multi-tasking, and so little time to focus on a single thought for any extended period of time.

Founder of Palo Alto Software and business planning expert

There were people transferred to Guantánamo who were sold for bounties, transferred there because of the watch they wore, where they slept or even just because they were Arabic men in Afghanistan. They were rounded up, brought to Guantánamo and many of them have remained there over 11 years.

One of the unique aspects of a prize is that when you put a dollar up in a prize purse, you're incentivising teams around the world to spend many times that dollar in pursuit of the competition. You are leveraging dollars in a completely different way- in a philanthropic pursuit.

One of the unique aspects of a prize, and particularly an X-Prize, is that it doesn't require letters after your name, specific degrees or backgrounds or so on. We simply define what it is we want solved, and award the prize to whomever is able to accomplish that.

People also lose sight of the fact that technology driven globalisation has been extremely beneficial for a lot of people outside the US. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted above the poverty line in India, China, Africa and elsewhere.

University of Chicago finance professor specializing in private equity and leveraged buyouts

Technology, scale and globalisation has helped people involved in business- and led to increased incomes for many groups. The conundrum we have in society is that many of the 'less-skilled' members of the population have not done so well from these trends and that's part of the reason for backlash.

University of Chicago finance professor specializing in private equity and leveraged buyouts

What the verdict says, to the astonishment of tens of millions of us, is that you can go looking for trouble in Florida, with a gun and a great deal of racial bias, and you can find that trouble, and you can act upon that trouble in a way that leaves a young man dead, and none of it guarantees that you will be convicted of a crime.

Founder of Integral Institute & Author on Evolutionary Spirituality

There are very few African-American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me... And there are very few African-American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.

44th President of the United States (2009-2017)

Race and guns, both of which have conspired not only to take the life of a teenager, but to make that killing entirely permissible. I can't look an African-American parent in the eye for thinking about what they must tell their sons about what can happen to them on the streets of their country.

Creator of The Wire, acclaimed HBO crime drama series

What crises actually do is expose the underlying fragility and structural flaws within an economy and society. Some of this is endemic – financial markets are fragile because they are giant pools of sentiment and leverage at their heart.

Another important argument for maintaining the status quo is that eliminating a core symbol of the monetary regime could disrupt common social conventions for using money, possibly in unexpected ways.

Economist & Harvard Professor; Former IMF Chief Economist

The complexity of the topic combined with significant political and social blindness towards it, has led to disability becoming one of the most significant un-addressed issues of modern time.

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