Wisdom in fragments

Surgery, like many other disciplines, is primarily about facts, your relationship with the facts, how you manage, handle, interpret and use those facts. This is something we all begin to do very early in life, in our childhood. We look at information coming in from the external world, determine what is useful, determine how we understand it, build a fuller picture and effect change. A surgical mindset is very much that.

Walls are seductive though… what politician hasn't said, 'I can make it like the old-days again…' Bridges sound harder – how do you build them? What will they cost? Who will pay? In truth, build walls almost always yields a negative result.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

Our economic measures aren't wrong, they're incomplete. Smith noted that a successful economic system is one where everyone who participates can flourish. That's not about equality of outcome, but about the fact that everyone has the ability to flourish, equality of opportunity.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

If Smith were alive today, he'd say that in addition to the openness and competition and all the wealth we are creating, we need a sense of mutual sympathy and empathy. We need to give people the ability to compete.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

The genius of the classical economists was to think of economics and politics as the same. Remember, in Smiths' Day, there was no economics faculty, it was political economy. We may need to go back to that.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

We've had a collective gap of imagination around economic bridges. Lincoln used the government as a battering ram to bring opportunity to those left behind. The country was modernising, industrialising, and Lincoln wanted to empower people. We did that. Franklin Roosevelt did it with the GI Bill. We know how to build bridges; we just don't build them.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

Whether it's in economics, politics, or wider society, there's a debate about capitalism versus socialism; but I don't really think that's what's happening. If you look at the populist undercurrents around the world- it's really about walls & bridges. When there are big changes in the economy – like globalisation or technological change, the simple thing to tell voters is, 'we'll build a wall to protect you against those changes…' what you really need however, is bridges.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

Pleasure has limits, it's fleeting, we habituate to it quickly and get bored of it. You can only experience pleasure against a backdrop of pain, difficulty, or struggle. We allocate pain and pleasure; we balance them out in clever ways.

Psychologist specializing in moral development and human nature research

Meaningful and moral are different in an interesting sense; something can be meaningful, and yet be morally terrible. Adolf Eichmann was clearly engaged in what he thought was a meaningful pursuit, perhaps he was even in a state of flow, thinking that what he was doing was 'good' – even though he was the architect of the death of millions.

Psychologist specializing in moral development and human nature research

Purpose and meaning are inextricably tied to suffering and difficulty. If you tell me a pursuit that you view as meaningful and important, I can guarantee it won't be easy. If it was easy, it wouldn't be meaningful or important. We reserve the notion of meaning for things that have difficulty.

Psychologist specializing in moral development and human nature research

Chosen suffering is part and parcel of a meaningful life. If you don't have any chosen suffering in your life, you're probably not living the best life you could. To put it primitively, we're the mammal that likes Tabasco sauce! We're the only creature that seeks out suffering and pain willingly.

Psychologist specializing in moral development and human nature research

The field of positive psychology, and people in general, would benefit from thinking harder about what a good life is. A lot of people think we're pleasure motivated hedonists, but it turns out we have many other goals. We want happiness, but that comes in many different forms. We want pleasure, we want to be good people, we want to make a difference in the world, we want meaningful pursuits.

Psychologist specializing in moral development and human nature research

Mixed martial arts aren't like boxing. In boxing, if you lose on your way up? It's pretty much career over. In mixed martial arts, there are so many ways to win and lose... When that happens, you say, 'OK, what did I do wrong?' – you have to be honest with yourself.

Former UFC Middleweight Champion & MMA fighter turned commentator

I knew I could still fight, and some of the people close to me said, 'not with one eye you can't' so I continued anyway... I lied, I cheated and scammed the system... I did whatever I could. It was highly stressful, but I believed in myself.

Former UFC Middleweight Champion & MMA fighter turned commentator

When you're getting defeated in training, you're getting better. You've got to get tested in life if you're going to improve. When you're training in the martial arts, you always want to be getting beaten in the practice room. That signifies you're fighting good people.

Former UFC Middleweight Champion & MMA fighter turned commentator

You're not going to be a warrior in battle unless you are a warrior in preparation. You have to be single-minded, you can't just show-up on the night... That's where the warrior mindset turns on – it's when you prepare so can do whatever it takes to win that fight.

Former UFC Middleweight Champion & MMA fighter turned commentator