There's no point in just hankering for the big trade unions of the 1950s or '60s.

People think there's a single solution to complex problems, and the solution is often making an enemy of a group of people - pulling back and rejecting the other.

I keep coming back to the phrase "Dance with the system" - not just march onwards no matter what happens.

Floundering around, learning by doing but also by failing, is not only good but inevitable.

If you were disabled in Russia, you had to re-register every year, and it took up to six months to re-register, so people who lost limbs in Afghanistan had to prove that their leg hadn't grown back.

Somewhere like Russia or China, decision-makers have far fewer constraints on acting than in more open systems.

There are always pressures on decision-makers other than just what is right or what is wrong.

Lots of people in the open system are very determined to try and strengthen evidence-based policy.

To be effective at selling ideas, at being a lobbyist, influencing other people, you have to be very sure of yourself.

I see [activists] getting really angry that people won't just do what the evidence tells them, and that's not very helpful. You need to actually think why that is.

I sound like a church nut, but look at the role of the churches in the civil rights movement in the States. People are brought together in other ways that can become drivers of change.

i had a dream when i was 22 that someday i would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till i came to one of the poles of the earth

The one thing that cannot be outsourced is creativity. We have to find ways to support creative people because the only way we are going to improve our laws... is by creating our way out of it.

Children should be able to see the Gospel modeled in the way their father loves their mother with a sacrificial love.

Teachers create and transform energy. They are the dynamos of educational change.

This is less teaching than damage control. You may as well paint a house that’s on fire.

The death of the spirit is the price of progress.

I have a weird sense that people ten years younger than me don't own a radio, or maybe they own a radio, but they don't call it a radio.

If we show Allah just a little bit of gratitude, He tells us, 'I will increase you, and increase you, and increase you, I swear to it. If you could only show Me the least bit of gratitude.'

Be ahead of all farewells as if they were behind you, like the winter that is just departing.

Begin to live each day as if it was your last.