From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
You actually see behaviours that show this when people say, 'Oh don't show me that photograph or film, I can't bear to watch that because I love my steak!' When else would we say that? Would you hear people saying, 'oh don't show me those child labour photographs because I love my nighties!' These behaviours are an admission that we know something is wrong.
We also don't really have cultural mechanisms that emphasize what truly matters—not so much the hustle, but the rest. The social connection. The deeper forms of connection we get from meeting people face-to-face.
We engage in this kind of behaviour even more enthusiastically when we're anxious about being excluded or left out.
Distrust in government is very dangerous – what follows is the ability for authoritarian and totalitarian forms of government to take control, and that doesn't do anybody, any good.
You know those people starving in Africa? Pretty soon, they are going to be able to call us… to complain. There are people who are likely to have cheap access to reliable International phone calls before they have cheap access to a reliable food supply. That's a remarkable thing to contemplate.
We have to stop pretending that there's no adversity, or that we can't do anything about the adversity we face. We need to fix the culture of silence and ignorance surrounding bias and adversity.
Knowledge diffusion mediated by migrants tends to be intergenerational. When German chemists were expelled and moved to the United States, the people who really adopted their ideas and technology were from the next generation.
Creation, whatever form it takes, must improve the lives of as many people as possible.
I made a principled decision that none of my wealth will be passed on as inheritance, that my capital will work for philanthropic causes. In other words, philanthropy is the reason I make money.
In No One Killed Jessica (2011), a true crime tale of a woman searching for her sister's killer, Balan (known to her many fans as simply Vidya) proved that a film without a male lead could be a commercial success.
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.
Children are bought and sold like animals, sometimes at a lower price than animals. 168 million children work as child labourers, more than 200 million children who should be in education are not at school.