From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
It feels to us that the festival is owned by the people, and me and my Dad are kind-of custodians of it. In that sense, it's a bit like a sailing ship… me and my Dad drive it, but the ship is made of a few hundred people.
In a democracy, an informed citizenry can act as a driving force for more robust and effective foreign policies and strategies related to national security, thereby fostering peace and encouraging prosperity. However, the lack of such comprehensive education has been a stumbling block.
I have not been an urban investor in re-gentrification, which tries to change the character of a community and, candidly, is very speculative. Instead I look at revitalisation, which constitutes investing in existing densely populated and ethnically diverse communities and delivering the goods and services that are sought after but not provided.
It's very clear that the sole purpose of business is not just to make money for shareholders, but actually to look after their employees, their communities and their society. Businesses play a role in society, and they have a voice which they have to use. Silence is not an option.
When we crafted that phrase, it was because we saw a similarity with physical fitness. If you work out today, you don't return home and declare, 'Great, I'm finished, I never have to exercise again.' Those with the strongest social bonds diligently nurture them throughout their lives.
More girls have been killed in the past fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century.
We need to give women the freedom and confidence to believe and be whatever they want to. This isn't just about business, but about social conditioning in all cultures.
Clothing concerns all of the human person, all of the body, all of the relationships of man to body as well as the relationships of the body to society.
Unless women have the chance to take up an active role in our economies and fulfil their potential, our ambitions for a fairer and more prosperous world simply won't be realised.
All you have to do is walk through an airport, for example, and notice that it is very difficult to navigate through it. You will encounter humans (almost statue like) who are glued – looking at their mobile phones, unaware of what is happening around them, because they are addicted to their technology. That is by design that people are addicted to technology.
We can expand our circle of sympathy – we can employ the logic of impartiality, and the emotional prompts of human contact and vicarious experience, and expand our fellow-feeling from our family to our clan, our nation, tribe, and from there to all of humanity and even other sentient beings.
My father arrived in this country with just $16 in his pocket, and my mother, also an immigrant from Congo, instilled in me that the notion of life being too difficult was not an excuse, especially in the United States or any developed Western country where one is inherently blessed.