My best friend in medical school was a magician. And we were shown an X-ray of a sword-swallower, and I tried it and failed. Then I got a sword-swallower as a patient, and he taught me.

I have a neighbor who knows 200 types of wine. ... I only know two types of wine - red and white. But my neighbor only knows two types of countries - industrialized and developing. And I know 200.

The idea is to go from numbers to information to understanding.

My interest is not data, it's the world. And part of world development you can see in numbers. Others, like human rights, empowerment of women, it's very difficult to measure in numbers.

I have a motto: it's never too late to give up. It's never too late to give up what you are doing, and start doing what you realise you love.

I have a suggestion for a new name for the developing world. Let's call it the world.

Let the dataset change your mindset

Few people will appreciate the music if I just show them the notes. Most of us need to [hear it].

I have shown that Swedish top students know statistically significantly less about the world than the chimpanzees.

Avoid war, because that always pushes human beings backward.

Health cannot be bought at the supermarket. You have to invest in health. You have to get kids into schooling. You have to train health staff. You have to educate the population.

As much as they were right for each other, time wasn't right for them.

Nothing ever stays the same. Just because things aren't good now doesn't mean they will be that way forever....Never quit.

We have newsreaders behaving like actors, lowering their voices if it's a sad story, as if we didn't know it's a sad story. There isn't a single cool newsreader.

Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men's souls.

Yet a real artist, I've noticed, will survive anything. (Even praise, I happily suspect.)

The real friends of the space voyager are the stars. Their friendly, familiar patterns are constant companions, unchanging, out there.

Memories are made of peculiar stuff, elusive and yet compelling, powerful and fleet. You cannot trust your reminiscences, and yet there is no reality except the one we remember.

He's the type of man who will end up dying in his own arms.

Do not compare yourself to others. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.