If I Could Tell You Just One Thing...: Encounters with Remarkable People and Their Most Valuable Advice

by Richard Reed

‘With many people, there is a sense the world is falling apart and it creates a feeling of just giving up. And that inertia is the real danger to society. People have to realise we can create change by changing ourselves.’

her main piece of advice is a rallying cry to commit deeply to whatever it is you feel that you must do.

we are all members of the same human family. We all have fears, and hopes and aspirations. We all have our vulnerabilities, so we should be very careful before we attribute negative stereotypes to other people.

Terry’s empathy helped him stick to the three rules he set himself when he realised that he’d been taken hostage: no regrets, no self-pity and no sentimentality.

The quality of your life ultimately depends on the quality of your relationships.

‘Discover the joy of embracing diversity. When people become more open to the strange, to the unusual, to the radical, to the “other”, we become more nourished as a species. Currently our ability to do that is being manipulated, diversity is being looked upon as a source of evil rather than as a source of joy and development. We must recapture the profound benefits of seeing the joy in our collective diversity, not the fear.’

‘there’s no major problem facing our planet that would not be easier to solve with fewer people’.

Alexander’s work brings hope to such places. He of course makes no distinctions between whether people are innocent or not: he starts from the position that they are all human beings and deserve to be able to live and, inevitably sometimes, die with dignity.

‘It is not elitist, it is not boring, reading deepens and quickens the native intelligence. I never went to university but I read or reread something very great every day and consider it part of my training, like a boxer has to punch every day.’

‘Make always the best from what you have, no matter how little it is.’

‘We need people with different life experiences so we can hear each other’s stories, to add to them, to understand them, to disagree with them, to help people stop feeling self-conscious about bumping into other tribes and help people feel there could be something richer if they experiment with other human relationships.’

‘If there’s just one piece of advice I could give, then I would urge people to foster a love of reading. It’s our core skill as human beings. It’s the gateway to everything else. It gets you involved. It allows your curiosity to follow its course. It connects us across time and space. Books and reading are the most important things. Yes, I would say above all else, I would urge people to foster a love of reading. Start as early as you can and keep on reading.’