Society

How many years or months do we have to be surprised before we realise it's not a surprise that this is a regular pattern? We will have massive waves of forced displacement.

Population aging is evidence that we've been doing a lot of things right. We're confident that if we have children, they will live long lives as well and we've never had those trends before in all human history.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about demography and one of the biggest misunderstandings is that it's destiny. If it's destiny, it is not that interesting to study, but it's not destiny.

The future is baked into the population of today, and that makes it very convenient for looking at the next couple of decades as our future soldiers are today in nursery school, and our future retirees are entering college.

If you whisk these individuals an additional 200 hundred years forward to present day Jerusalem, these individuals would be entirely shocked. Past knowledge will be largely obsolete. New technologies would appear as witchcraft. Occupations would require incomprehensible skills, and life expectancy would instantaneously double.

Economist known for unified growth theory explaining long-term economic development

Conditional on the emergence of the human brain, civilisation was inevitable for many reasons. We had a commendable population in Africa 300,000 years ago and given the fact that these individuals were equipped with the power of the modern brain, the emergence of civilisation was inevitable.

Economist known for unified growth theory explaining long-term economic development

World income per capita has increased 14-fold in the past 200 years, whereas over 300,000 years of human existence, it hardly changed. I describe it as the mystery of growth, namely what generated this dramatic transformation in the standard of living over the past 200 years after literally 300,000 years of stagnation?

Economist known for unified growth theory explaining long-term economic development

Politicians often forget that people are much more complex, and are a mix of many identities – and each of these identities can be of differing importance to the individual.

Society must demand that you comport yourself within a framework of rules. Once those rules break, society breaks down.

Creator and star of TV show "Judge Judy" for 25 years

We're pro-tech, but we need technology that works for us and intersects with our interests. Today, we have technology which is specifically designed to hack and invade our attention – and it doesn't need to be that way.

Journalist and author known for books on addiction and depression

I don't think it's a coincidence that globally, we're having the biggest crisis of democracy since the 1930s. At the same time as we're finding it hard to focus and pay attention, we also can't listen to each other.

Journalist and author known for books on addiction and depression

Your attention hasn't collapsed, it's been stolen from you by big forces. Once we understand those forces, we can begin to build meaningful solutions.

Journalist and author known for books on addiction and depression

We keep getting told we need to be living our best life- but we forget we already are. We have a weird epidemic of hating on ourselves, if we stopped doing that, life would get way easier.

British Radio & TV Presenter, Model & Wellness Author

I don't feed stomachs, I feed minds. Education is the only weapon capable of transforming a community. Imagine… I was an illiterate 17-year-old boy, and I can do this. Imagine what we can do if we empower everyone.

On our Sahara Desert crossing, there was a man, who was dying of thirst, who urinated in his hand and shared some with me when he needed it to survive. The world is about sharing and giving to others.

I need to tell my story until there are no more stories like mine. More than 97% of my friends, with whom I shared this journey, died. My mission was to be voice for all those who died on my journey, and who kept on dying.