Society

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

What is worrying is not the rise of multinational corporations, but the rise of social media. Facebook has 2.5 billion participants and 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 Cold War.

Harvard Professor & Creator of "Soft Power" Concept

I strongly believe that art and creative work are essential to a healthy society.

Founder of Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform pioneer

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

You have this very activist sociology rather than a dispassionate or objective sociology informing a broadly humanist framework of caring about flourishing versus suffering. When your sociology has decided that the point of studying society is to change it, you've got a problem.

Mathematician & Scholar of Critical Theory Criticism & Academic Discourse

Critical theories give proposed solutions to legitimate problems that could not possibly be more open to manipulation and grift. The manipulators and grifters have filled the vacuum to the point where they're only ones who can benefit.

Mathematician & Scholar of Critical Theory Criticism & Academic Discourse

Empowerment means we are able to sustain hope in a situation that may – to many outsiders – look hopeless.

British Labour Politician & Former Foreign Secretary

The gap between the situation of people caught in conflict and the rest of us is growing, not narrowing. The gap is not going to be narrowed by trying to change the words on paper, we have to live up to them.

British Labour Politician & Former Foreign Secretary

When you empower people economically, your social programmes go further. When you join economic empowerment to social protection, you get double the benefit and thus there is a very hard-headed reason to support livelihoods not just lives.

British Labour Politician & Former Foreign Secretary

The displacement that people face is now over generations not just years. The old model was to keep people alive until they go home. That model is broken, less than 3% of the world's refugees went home last year.

British Labour Politician & Former Foreign Secretary

Ultimately, we want to make it unnecessary to be a B Corp – we want it to be just the norm of how all businesses are run, but that means we have to change the rules of the game and the role of business in society.

Co-Founder of Bridgewater Associates & Pioneer in Radical Transparency

Businesses have a tremendous amount of power to have impact through practices and business models that operate ethically, create useful goods and services, create jobs with dignity, and create opportunities in communities that may not have existed before.

Co-Founder of Bridgewater Associates & Pioneer in Radical Transparency

Systems change is slow because it requires consensus that there is a system failure to start with, as well as the presence of a viable alternative. This requires a combination of culture shift, behavioral change, and structural change to ultimately change the rules of the game.

Co-Founder of Bridgewater Associates & Pioneer in Radical Transparency

The system we've built has been successful at lifting many people out of poverty, and at creating amazing products and technologies, but it's not solving many of the problems we face today – in fact, rules and culture of our economic have created many of those problems.

Co-Founder of Bridgewater Associates & Pioneer in Radical Transparency

When I started out, there weren't many women in jewellery, and I hope that by creating a more open-minded approach to creativity and design, that I have been able to make a change on what was a very male dominated world.