Wisdom in fragments

Only a handful of diplomats and governments are prepared to put the global good before the national interest. Seldom is it the case for any diplomat that they put the global good high up on the agenda; in my career I've seen it very rarely. Only 30 of the 193 or so ambassadors at the UN in NY will be devoted to a multilateral context. Most are pursuing bilateral interests in a multilateral context.

UN Human Rights Chief & International Justice Advocate

In my experience, unless you are directly affected by a human rights abuse, you are unlikely to give it a second thought. How many times do you draw breath a day? It's about 22,000 times – you don't think about it until you can't. That's exactly how most people view human rights- they are generally apathetic and may express some concern or sympathy when they hear about something on the news, but they don't mobilise unless it affects them directly.

UN Human Rights Chief & International Justice Advocate

World poverty has been reduced significantly- and whilst everyone seems to think the world is getting more impoverished, this simply is not the case. Scientific cooperation has improved too, and this has allowed significant advances in global health.

Harvard Professor & Creator of "Soft Power" Concept

In the short-run, my fear would be that we've mismanaged the relationship with China through miscalculation to produce a 1914-like situation. I think it's a low-probability outcome, but it could of course be mismanaged. There's obviously the danger of nuclear weapons and a miscalculation leading to their use, and inevitably therefore, catastrophic outcomes.

Harvard Professor & Creator of "Soft Power" Concept

What is worrying is not the rise of multinational corporations, but the rise of social media. Facebook has 2.5 billion participants and whilst some may argue they are an instrument of the American state, it's worth noticing that Russia was able to use Facebook as a device to penetrate and disrupt the American electoral process in 2016.

Harvard Professor & Creator of "Soft Power" Concept

People are now talking of a new 'Cold War' with China. This is a very misleading use of history. If you look at the relationship between China and the US today, there is half a trillion dollars of trade, and some 350,000 Chinese students and 3 million Chinese tourists are in the US. It's more complex than the type of relationship we had during the Cold War.

Harvard Professor & Creator of "Soft Power" Concept

Power is the ability to affect others and get the outcomes you want – and that's true whether on the individual, national or international level. You can exert power in three ways. You can do it with coercion (sticks), you can do it with payments (carrots) and you can do it with soft power – through attraction.

Harvard Professor & Creator of "Soft Power" Concept

I'll hope I have helped be more generative and less extractive, through my own actions, and through my support of others. We live in a world where we're constantly battling these forces and we need to ensure we're more generative than extractive — of each other, of our planet — I believe we can do it.

Founder of Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform pioneer

Navigating complexity and uncertainty requires long-term thinking, not long-term planning. Long-term thinking requires accepting, even enjoying, the challenges of unpredictability, builds the flexibility required to navigate it, and rejects simplified narratives that lose the nuance of this reality.

Founder of Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform pioneer

I believe businesses need to move away from having profit as their primary reason for existing, that's why we built Kickstarter as a public benefit corporation and encoded our mission into our fiduciary responsibility. Profit primacy can be replaced by mission primacy.

Founder of Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform pioneer

The traditional sources of capital for ideas — investment, charity, rich relatives, grants — are nowhere near sufficient to the number of good ideas in the world. Now, the internet has democratized this, and you don't need to be wealthy to be a patron. You can help bring something to life with $10 because you like the project, not because you see it as a financial return.

Founder of Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform pioneer

What feels similar is the pursuit — by artists and entrepreneurs — of the actualization of an idea borne in their minds; and then pursuing bringing this vision to reality. Especially at the beginning, it takes just the right amount of delusion to dedicate yourself to something ambitious. The reality is you're more likely to fail than succeed and so you need strong belief to commit your heart and soul to an idea; as well as a bit of over-optimism (delusion) to make the sacrifices they are often called for to bring anything to life.

Founder of Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform pioneer

The internet has a natural pressure to bubble us up and vulcanise society, it makes it less comfortable for us to be around people who think differently, and more comfortable to be around people who think the same as us.

We now have religion based not on theology but on sociology. In principle, that's not a bad thing, but when your sociology has decided that the point of studying society is to change it (which was Marx's dictem), you've got a problem.

Technology presents a difficulty for our world right now. Everyone is simultaneously an individual who can have a conversation, and a broadcaster. So we're getting on social media and training ourselves to think in broadcast mode, but then we go out in public and get our wires crossed.

We have a very parasitic ideology; it operates like a virus. To stop a virus, you have to understand how it attaches to cells... you have to create an immune response via a vaccine... or by having the disease and fighting it.