Daniel > Daniel's Quotes

“Of all the things that human beings make and do for each other, it is the unquantifiable ones that contribute most to human happiness.”
― Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

“the chance of an average developing-country person being an entrepreneur is more than twice that for a developed-country person (30 per cent vs. 12.8 per cent).”
― Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

“Economies thrive when individuals strive, but because individuals will only strive for their own happiness, it is essential that they mistakenly believe that producing and consuming are routes to personal well-being.”
― Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

“the existing market economy has no “stable” or “neutral” setting: there is only growth or contraction.”
― Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

“The end of economic growth does not necessarily mean we’ve reached the end of qualitative improvements in human life.”
― Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

“Despite their economic advantages, specialization and globalization in some ways reduce resilience — a quality that is essential to our adapting to the end of growth.”
― Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

“Urbanization, the industrialization of food systems, and the building of highways may have contributed to GDP over the short term, but they have created societal vulnerability over the longer term. In a world of Peak Oil, scarce fresh water, unstable currencies, changing climate, and declining trade, true “development” may require implementation of policies at odds with — sometimes the very reverse of — those of recent decades.”
― Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

“the economic pain gripping the United States will not actually be the fault of immigrants — or China, Muslims, environmentalists, or even terrorists. Nor is the essential problem Big Government: As we have seen, the desperate effort to inflate government spending and power is more of an effect than a cause of the nation’s predicament.”
― Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

“Nationalization of the economy will not constitute a solution to society’s difficulties; it will merely be a reflexive means of averting immediate meltdown.”
― Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

“All of the solutions to our growth-based problems involve some form of self-restraint. That’s why most of those solutions remain just good ideas. That’s also why we will probably hit the wall, and why the outcomes described in the previous chapters of this book are likely. The sustainability revolution will occur. The depletion of nonrenewable resources ensures that humankind will eventually base its economy on renewable resources harvested at rates of natural replenishment. But that revolution will be driven by crisis.”
― Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

“For the past century or so, the basic dilemma of economic policy has been thought to be the one between promoting the increase in total wealth8 (or income) and the equality or fairness of the distribution of that wealth (or income).9 The emphasis between these is also one way to make the economic split into the “right” and “left” wings in politics10 – the right primarily focusing on maximizing total wealth and economic freedom, the left primarily concerned with economic equality and security.”
― Tuure Parkkinen, Fixing the Root Bug: The Simple Hack for a Growth-Independent, Fair and Sustainable Market Economy 2.0

“The actual “Root Bug” is the fact that earning opportunities (work) aren’t allocated to people (in the mid-term) according to their willingness to spend and invest.”
― Tuure Parkkinen, Fixing the Root Bug: The Simple Hack for a Growth-Independent, Fair and Sustainable Market Economy 2.0

“In fact, Egypt is poor precisely because it has been ruled by a narrow elite that have organized society for their own benefit at the expense of the vast mass of people.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Why Nations Fail: FROM THE WINNERS OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty

“in a quasi-stagnant society, wealth accumulated in the past will inevitably acquire disproportionate importance.”
― Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century

“The general evolution is clear: bubbles aside, what we are witnessing is a strong comeback of private capital in the rich countries since 1970, or, to put it another way, the emergence of a new patrimonial capitalism.”
― Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century

“the revival of private wealth is partly due to the privatization of national wealth.”
― Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century

“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” “Less but better” is a principle whose time has come.”
― Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

“When we play, we are engaged in the purest expression of our humanity, the truest expression of our individuality.”
― Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

“If the answer isn’t a definite yes then it should be a no.”
― Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

“We can use our energies to set up a system that makes execution of goodness easy, or we can resign ourselves to a system that actually makes it harder to do what is good.”
― Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

“Why should people have to stick to a career choice they made as an unprepared and inexperienced adolescent?”
― BusinessNews Publishing, Summary: The Seven-Day Weekend: Review and Analysis of Semler's Book

“If the people aren’t motivated, they don’t need to sign up for motivation training – they need a different job!”
― BusinessNews Publishing, Summary: The Seven-Day Weekend: Review and Analysis of Semler's Book

“Education is the system that’s supposed to develop our natural abilities and enable us to make our way in the world. Instead, it is stifling the individual talents and abilities of too many students and killing their motivation to learn. There’s a huge irony in the middle of all of this.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“One of the enemies of creativity and innovation, especially in relation to our own development, is common sense.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“Grand Prix racer Jochen Rindt said simply that when he’s racing, “You ignore everything and just concentrate. You forget about the rest of the world and become part of the car and track. It’s a very special feeling. You’re completely out of this world and completely into it. There’s nothing like it.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“A strong will to be yourself is an indomitable force.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“Public education puts relentless pressure on its students to conform.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“in January 2004, the number of unemployed American college graduates actually exceeded the number of unemployed high school dropouts.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“The most powerful method of improving education is to invest in the improvement of teaching and the status of great teachers.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“The dominant Western worldview is not based on seeing synergies and connections but on making distinctions and seeing differences.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything