From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Four days before she died, she challenged my daughter and I to try and find a pocketful of happiness in each day, which has become the mantra by which we navigate the abyss of grief, following her death. I don't think you ever get over grief, you just have to find a way to accommodate and travel around it.
We can use the pain of our past as a catapult propelling us forward. As the saying goes, 'the best revenge is a life well-lived.' So, the most gratifying way to spite all those who tried to harm me during my childhood is to say, 'Look at me now; I'm speaking to Vikas Shah, 50 years later.'
I have a deep fascination with the natural world, the problems that living creatures need to solve and how natural selection evolution by natural selection has solved those problems. When it comes to flight... It's all about physics... how you solve the problems raised by physics.
As you think this through, a lot of structure dissolves. And then the question becomes: what remains once all of that is gone? You could still choose to do these activities, of course, but there would no longer be any point—no instrumental need. You would only do them simply because you wanted to…
Indeed, these concepts transcend our natural intuition, but I firmly believe they aren't beyond our grasp. As Einstein marveled, the universe seems to be comprehensible.
Corruption can be seen as denigration of the basic right of people to dignity. It is also a threat to human security and human rights.
Just think; our bodies are not just one single individual…. We're collections of 30-40 trillion cells that work collaboratively to create you or me. Life began 4 billion years ago on this planet as very simple prokaryotic life forms evolved into more complex individual eukaryotic life forms, multicellular life and then eventually tissues and organs.
The journey we're on doesn't necessarily have a fixed destination; rather, it's about moving in the right direction. The purpose of life is to decipher your own purpose in life. This isn't a contradictory statement; rather, it's a necessary paradox. We exist in order to uncover the reasons for our existence.
I believe that success in business can be measured by if you enjoy what you are doing; create something that stands out; create something that everyone is really proud of.
I've said to my children, and grandchildren, that if you do the right thing – there's no guarantee that the right thing will happen. That's the way of the world. If you do the wrong thing however, you'll face karma. If you do the wrong thing? At some point in your life, something bad is going to happen to you.
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.
By definition, existential risks are those which- by definition- could terminate the species, or permanently limit the long term potential of our civilisation. Martin Rees, the distinguished scientist, said that the difference between killing 90% of humanity, and 100% of humanity is not 10%. The difference is huge. By killing 100% of humanity, you are also killing all future generations.