My first book, 'In Praise of Slowness,' examines how the world got stuck in fast-forward and chronicles a global trend towards putting on the brakes. That trend is called the Slow movement. 'Slow' in this context does not mean doing everything at a s...
My first Kickstarter project created a book called 'Clear and Present Thinking', a college-level textbook on logic and critical reasoning, which was made available to the world for free. As a professor myself, I observed that the price of textbooks w...
When you see a person, do you just concentrate on their looks? It's just a first impression. Then there's someone who doesn't catch your eye immediately, but you talk to them and they become the most beautiful thing in the world. The greatest actors ...
I am drawn, as a reader, to detail-drenched stories about human lives affected as much by the internal as by the external, the kind of fiction that Jane Smiley nicely describes as 'first and foremost about how individuals fit, or don't fit, into thei...
Eventually I found it had been working all along-but didn't show anything on screen until it had the first full page of text. I inserted 30 new lines, and suddenly my toy said 'hEllO woRlD'. An hour later I understood alphabet shifting rather better!
I was never the smartest guy in the room. From the first person I hired, I was never the smartest guy in the room. And that's a big deal. And if you're going to be a leader - if you're a leader and you're the smartest guy in the world - in the room, ...
I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate...
If we want to live freely and privately in the interconnected world of the twenty-first century - and surely we do - perhaps above all we need a revival of the small-town civility of the nineteenth century. Manners, not devices: sometimes it's just b...
[on the war that devastated the Real World] Morpheus: We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power. It was believed they would be unable to survive without...
Mike Teevee: Look at me, I'm gonna be be the first person in the world to be sent by television! Mrs. Teevee: Mike, get away from that thing! Willy Wonka: [unenthusiastically] Stop. Don't. Come back. Mike Teevee: Lights, camera, *action*!
[last lines] Jordan Belfort: I'm not ashamed to admit it: my first time in prison, I was terrified. For a moment, I had forgotten I lived in a world where everything was for sale. Wouldn't you like to know how to sell it?
I'd much rather see a world where, when you make some quirky comment on a blog or news story or you upload a video clip, instead of just a moment of fame for your pseudonym, you'll get 50 bucks. The first time that happens, you'll realise that you're...
That first company I started made a lot of money for the venture capitalists - nearly $30 million - but next to nothing for the founders. The companies I started after that varied between failures and mediocre successes. But at no point did I ever co...
Mehmet Ertegun died in 1944. President Roosevelt sent his body back to Turkey on the U.S.S. Missouri. Mehmet Ertegun and President Roosevelt had had a cordial relationship, and, indeed, Mehmet Ertegun may have helped insure that Turkey did not ally i...
I first came to London as a musician, and when my group broke up, I did 'Guys and Dolls' at the Watford Palace theatre. After that, Ned Sherrin found me and brought me to the West End to do one of his shows. The work went from strength to strength, s...
I have a younger brother and sister who actually play in my band, and we were always into Disney music, big time. The first time I heard myself sing was when I recorded myself singing a Disney song. I remember it because it was awful, and I didn't ex...
I am not the first Buddha who came upon Earth, nor shall I be the last. In due time, another Buddha will arise in the world - a Holy One, a supremely enlightened One, endowed with wisdom in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable l...
[greets Bruce from the entryway of a private jet, seeing him for the first time after he left Gotham City seven years before to travel the world anonymously and train himself to fight criminals] Alfred Pennyworth: You look very fashionable. Apart fro...
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whet...
But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to ...
I was in my office when - on 9/11. I think I had a number of meetings scheduled. I was just getting to know the bureau. And somebody walked in and said the first plane had - or a plane had struck the World Trade Center, one of the towers.
