When whistleblowers come forward, we need to fight for them, so others will be encouraged. When they are gagged, we must be their voice. When they are hunted, we must be their shield. When they are locked away, we must free them. Giving us the truth ...
There was a time in L.A. when I drove to 7-Eleven to go grocery shopping, and I locked my keys in my car, which wasn't insured. My wallet was in there, and I couldn't call AAA, because I only had $7 in my bank account. It was one of those moments whe...
What I'm not saying is that all government spending is bad. It's not - far, far from it, but there is no free lunch, as a former colleague of mine used to say. There is no public tooth fairy. Father Christmas does not work on the Treasury staff this ...
Feminists of my mother's generation argued that both mom and dad should work a little less and each do some of the household chores. My parents, for example, split everything 50/50. Even though my father is a terrible cook, he still made dinner exact...
Countries that need monies so that they can provide health care and education and shelter to their people shouldn't have to repay debts that we knowingly lent to bad regimes long since gone; and all illegitimate debts - debts lent to these terrible d...
I endorse a lot of people - sometimes people say I endorse too many books. And my response has always been the same: If I can get one case study that can give me one good idea that I can implement for $25, or for these days one-third of that on Kindl...
In the old days we were the challenger brand competing against the big banks, but today I go round the world and I sit with governors of central banks and finance ministers and, in some cases, prime ministers. They all know Travelex. We are regarded ...
Fear can be good when you're walking past an alley at night or when you need to check the locks on your doors before you go to bed, but it's not good when you have a goal and you're fearful of obstacles. We often get trapped by our fears, but anyone ...
I said peace is sometimes narrowly interpreted; it's the absence of conflict between nations or something. But peace is more inherent, more basic to human life, human beings, what we feel about each other, what we feel about life around us and what w...
I had always been told that you shouldn't clean the litter box when you're pregnant, because of your cat. And I think that is overblown - unless you have, like, three kittens in your house that are living outside and eating raw meat, this shouldn't r...
I've always loved doing research. I remember doing a research project on the Babylonian numeral system in the eighth grade and thinking, 'This is pretty awesome - is this really a job you can have?' This led me toward a career as an academic, althoug...
We all have secrets we keep locked away from the rest of the world... Friendships we pretend... Relationships we hide... But worst of all... Love we never let show. The most dangerous secrets a person can bury are those we keep from ourselves
When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the ques...
Knowing how to keep someone motivated and how to keep a connection are skills humans have learned and evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. A robot can't figure out whether you can do one more push-up, or how to motivate you to actually do it.
I think about everything first. I think about the scenario: the story and the characters, what I'm trying to say and I'll think about that for a couple of days until it's all locked in and then when I get to an instrument it'll just fall out. But the...
I am one of the most successful economists, according to what markets tell us, though most of my professional colleagues, who are much keener to accept market outcomes than I am, would dismiss me as a crank or - the worst of all abuses among economis...
I've read quite a few readers' reviews of my book on Amazon, saying, 'Ah, he criticises the free market, he advocates central planning.' I don't do that for a minute! But this is our black and white, dichotomous way of thinking - which has really bee...
Contrary to what many people believe, the welfare state was originally a 'rightwing' invention. It was the arch-conservative Otton von Bismarck who first introduced it. Bismarck hated socialism, but he wasn't an ideologue. He basically figured out th...
The Russian drama began at the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union mercifully ended. Russia and 14 other new countries emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Every one of those 15 new states faced a profound historical, economic, financial, socia...
I remember that, one day, I was visiting one training center in the 1990s that was teaching people how to fix Volkswagen engines from the 1960s, which were no longer sold. So you were training people on a skill that had zero value. The reason is that...
You have kids growing up in some of the worst circumstances financially, living in some of the worst ghettos, and they succeed. They succeed because an adult figure, typically a mother, maybe a grandmother, nourishes the kid, supports the kid, protec...
