“We are all creative beings, but we're brought up being told not to colour outside the lines – but why? It's OK to be different…. It's more than OK to be different, and we need to encourage that.”
— Rose McGowan
Actress & #MeToo activist who exposed Harvey Weinstein harassment

The quote archive

Wisdom in fragments

A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.

Chairman Bernanke, as good as he is academically, and as much integrity as he has (which I believe is unlimited), has an analytical framework that suggests a lot more inflation is allowable. Part of this is because he looks at core rather than headline, which is a flawed calculus.

— John Brynjolfsson

Unknown.

Remember that back in 1950, they invented something called the computer that allows you to do more complex calculations than you could with a paper and pencil. Computers allow us to use much more sophisticated statistical techniques to calculate seasonal adjustments, which mean that we do not need to use year-over-year calculations.

— John Brynjolfsson

Unknown.

The policies they prescribe are a continuation or exaggeration of the previous policies that created the structural problems in the first place. I am therefore relatively pessimistic on the intermediate and longer term outlook for the U.K., the U.S., Spain and other countries where credit was readily available.

— John Brynjolfsson

Unknown.

Rather than the emerging markets, or weaker economies, this problem originated in the most sophisticated and advanced financial markets because those are the markets where leverage was the greatest and people took the most advantage of it.

— John Brynjolfsson

Unknown.

the printing press helped democratise Europe by providing space for discussion and agreement among politically engaged citizens, often before the state had fully democratised.

— Jurgen Habermas

German Philosopher & Social Theorist; Developed Theory of Communicative Action

New media conducive to fostering participation can indeed increase freedoms… just as the printing press, the postal service, the telegraph and the telephone did before.

— Clay Shirky

Internet theorist & author on cognitive surplus and social media's impact.

Toyota's reputation for long-term quality is finished. People aren't going to buy Toyotas, period. It doesn't matter which model. What's happened is sufficient to keep people out of the stores.

— Maryann Keller

Automotive industry analyst and consultant, known for expertise in car manufacturing.

A single super large combo meal at any popular hamburger outlet will contain a full day's worth of calorie intake. When one sees such meals being purchased and eaten, one wonders whether the individual concerned is going to consume only water for the next 24 hours.

— Sir Richard Feachem

Unknown.

We are in the midst of a pandemic of eating too much (the overweight and obesity pandemic) and a pandemic of not having enough to eat (the under nutrition and hunger pandemic). Roughly 1.6 billion people in the world are affected by the first pandemic and roughly 1 billion people in the world today are affected by the second pandemic.

— Sir Richard Feachem

Unknown.

Roughly speaking, a child born today in a very poor country can expect to live about 40 years, while a child born today in a wealthy country could expect to live about 80 years.

— Sir Richard Feachem

Unknown.

We are scientifically naked in front of this threat. We do not have the diagnostics to quickly detect an MDR or XDR case. Once detected, we do not have the drugs to effectively treat the patient at reasonable cost, and we do not have a TB vaccine.

— Sir Richard Feachem

Unknown.

HIV/AIDS is the greatest pandemic in human history. It is chronic pandemic, in the sense that its rise and fall is measured in decades. The known part of this pandemic is now three decades old, and it has several decades still to run.

— Sir Richard Feachem

Unknown.

a country that stops its citizens having access to Facebook, say, or Google or Skype, faces real disadvantages – from inward investment to domestic discontent…

— Ross Anderson

Unknown.

In order to censor YouTube, for example, countries like Turkey and Pakistan had to block access to the whole site; it's not practical just to block selected content.

— Ross Anderson

Unknown.

the overall picture that's emerging is that the controls which still work operate more along corporate boundaries than along national boundaries.

— Ross Anderson

Unknown.

[the impact of the internet on liberty and free speech has been] very positive indeed – not so much two steps forward and one step back, as ten steps forward for every step back. By breaking the oligopoly of the established press and letting everyone be a publisher, it has made information much harder for the powerful to control.

— Ross Anderson

Unknown.