The wisdom of crowds works when the crowd is choosing the price of an ox, when there's a single numeric average. But if it's a design or something that matters, the decision is made by committee, and that's crap. You want people and groups who are ab...
I went to my boss, and I said, 'Look, I'd like to design these ties because I think they could be new.' He said, 'The world isn't ready for Ralph Lauren.' I never forgot that because... I thought that was a compliment.
All the things that you would have thought would have made me a professional A1 criminal... wrong. I decided that was too lazy and easy, and because of the way British society is, quite frankly you were denied an education, so I got one of my own.
I remember when President Bush, George W. Bush, came into office, he focused on No Child Left Behind, and with - and before very long, suddenly, Republicans were thought of as being as interested and as competent in education as Democrats, and why? B...
I wouldn't call myself a Christian because I do not believe that Jesus is God, nor do I believe that he ever thought that he was God, or that he ever said that he was God.
My Gram said that I would get the role in whichever show God thought was right but it wouldn't hurt to express a preference. I told her that I would like to do 'The Brady Bunch' because I'd have five other kids on the set to play with. God was listen...
No one should ever say that it was my ignorance if I did or showed forth anything however small according to God's good pleasure; but let this be your conclusion and let it so be thought, that - as is the perfect truth - it was the gift of God.
'The Simpsons' money got bigger and bigger. When I left 'The Simpsons', no one thought that this thing was going to still be around. It's the cumulative effect. It's like, 'Oh my God, 25 years later, and it's still coming in.'
I thought music could take you to a place where you didn't even feel ownership of it, you just felt lucky you were there. It's like church without God, or something. It's about feeling, hope and catharsis and things that are nurturing.
I guess I was the most unbohemian of all bohemians. My bohemianism consisted of not wanting to get involved with the stupid stuff that I thought people wanted you to get involved with - ... namely America... Dwight Eisenhower, McCarthyism and all tho...
My father-in-law and I always had great interest in Indian sport. At the Athens Olympics, watching the wrestling event, we started discussing the state of Indian sport - inadequate representation, lack of satisfactory results etc. We thought we shoul...
I had really great parents who always gave me lots of opportunity for choice, but I didn't always realize how rare that was for a girl for them to say, 'You can be a mom or have a career or do both or do something we haven't thought of yet.'
I've heard people, usually writers, say that no one wrote a great book after winning the Booker, but I honestly did not feel any big pressure. 'The Gathering' did hang over me in that it was darker than I thought at the time.
Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work.
I suppose when I was writing 'V for Vendetta' I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: 'Wouldn't it be great if these ideas actually made an impact?' So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world... It's peculiar.
I remember acting in a school play about the melting pot when I was very little. There was a great big pot onstage. On the other side of the pot was a little girl who had dark hair, and she and I were representing the Italians. And I thought: Is that...
It was a real surprise to me to come across the evidence that Christianity might once have been a danced religion. Certainly, some of the early church leaders thought this was great and spoke of what seems to have been circle dancing, perhaps around ...
When I was a freshman in high school, I got a letterman jacket, which you'd think would be great stock. The jacket had the big S on it, for Santa Monica. But rather than having a football or a baseball on the S, I had a little nine iron. Girls though...
Scotland is a much lighter and more fun place than I thought it was. I was miserable when I was there. But it wasn't Scotland's fault. It was my circumstances. I was - I hate to say the word humbled - but that's what it felt like. I was wrong about t...
I remember, after graduating high school, I got a part in a play with the Washington Shakespeare Festival - a little part. But I remember thinking this would be a great way of making a living... to be an actor. I never really thought I'd make a lot o...
I was aware that everybody said I was going to be a vast mega-flop, and that William Hague was just oh-so intelligent, and oh such a great parliamentarian, and therefore so different from me! So I thought, I must deprive them of the satisfaction of p...
