Chris J. Anderson > Quotes

“Your number-one mission as a speaker is to take something that matters deeply to you and to rebuild it inside the minds of your listeners. We’ll call that something an idea.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“Ants shape each other’s behavior by exchanging chemicals. We do it by standing in front of each other, peering into each other’s eyes, waving our hands and emitting strange sounds from our mouths. Human-to-human”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“Presentation literacy isn’t an optional extra for the few. It’s a core skill for the twenty-first century.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“Knowledge can’t be pushed into a brain. It has to be pulled in.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“We live in an era where the best way to make a dent on the world may no longer be to write a letter to the editor or publish a book. It may be simply to stand up and say something . . . because both the words and the passion with which they are delivered can now spread across the world at warp speed.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“First there is the 10-second war: can you do something in your first moments on stage to ensure people’s eager attention while you set up your talk topic? Second is the 1-minute war: can you then use that first minute to ensure that they’re committed to coming on the full talk journey with you?”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“President Woodrow Wilson was once asked about how long it took him to prepare for a speech. He replied: That depends on the length of the speech. If it is a 10-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“Your number-one mission as a speaker is to take something that matters deeply to you and to rebuild it inside the minds of your listeners.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“Am I a net giver or a net taker? Here’s what I propose: Once a year, perhaps as part of our New Year’s resolutions, or over a coffee during an annual vacation, or on GivingTuesday in late November, we each commit to spending an hour taking stock of our lives in pursuit of our own answer to this fundamental question.”
― Chris J. Anderson, Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading

“rehearsing the transitions is especially important. The audience needs to hear in your voice when you’re doubling down on an idea, versus when you’re changing subjects.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“We discovered this when we invited the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman to TED. Known as the father of behavioral economics, he’s an extraordinary thinker with a toolkit of ideas that can change any worldview. We had originally asked him to speak in the traditional TED way. No lectern. Just stand on the stage, with some note cards if need be, and give the talk. But in rehearsal, it was clear that he was uncomfortable. He hadn’t been able to fully memorize the talk and so kept pausing and glancing down awkwardly to catch himself up. Finally I said to him, “Danny, you’ve given thousands of talks in your time. How are you most comfortable speaking?” He said he liked to put his computer on a lectern so that he could refer to his notes more readily. We tried that, and he relaxed immediately. But he was also looking down at the screen a little too much. The deal we struck was to give him the lectern in return for looking out at the audience as much as he could. And that’s exactly what he did. His excellent talk did not come across as a recited or read speech at all. It felt connected. And he said everything he wanted to say, with no awkwardness.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“A successful talk is a little miracle – people see the world differently afterwards.”
― Chris J. Anderson

“El conocimiento no puede meterse a la fuerza en los cerebros ajenos. Debe hacerse entrar.”
― Chris J. Anderson, Charlas TED: La guía oficial TED para hablar en público (Deusto)

“The central thesis of this book is that anyone who has an idea worth sharing is capable of giving a powerful talk. The only thing that truly matters in public speaking is not confidence, stage presence, or smooth talking. It’s having something worth saying.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“Among the many lessons of Covid-19, one of the most profound is this: You don’t need to be big to be powerful. You just need to be infectious.”
― Chris J. Anderson, Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading

“If a boy with Albert Einstein's brain had been born in Germany in the dark ages, there would have been no scientific revolution emanating from him. If a girl with Marie Curie's mind had been born in a remote Indian village twenty years ago, today she'd probably be harvesting rice and struggling to raise her children.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“Many people approach a talk thinking they will just outline their work or describe their organization or explore an issue. That’s not a great plan. The talk is likely to end up unfocused and without much impact.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“Go and work on that dream as long as it takes to achieve something worthwhile. And then humbly come and share what you’ve learned. Inspiration can’t be performed.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“Indeed, perhaps the simplest, most powerful moral question people can ask of their own lives is this: Am I a net giver or a net taker? The answer to that question will come from taking stock of our lives. The people we’ve hurt versus the people we’ve helped. The resources we’ve consumed versus those we’ve protected. The ugliness we’ve been part of versus the beauty we’ve created.”
― Chris J. Anderson, Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading

“Není náhoda, že v kostele můžeme slyšet každý týden kázání, které obsahuje tytéž věci stále dokola, jen pokaždé trochu jinak. Je-li důležitá myšlenka zabalena v čerstvém příběhu a dobře podána, může z ní být skvělá řeč.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“We’re odd things, we humans. The prospective happiness that shouts loudest doesn’t deliver. The version that whispers oh so softly can last a lifetime.”
― Chris J. Anderson, Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading

“So let’s put those three things together. Nonmaterial things are playing an ever more important role in our lives. It’s easily possible to give them away on an unlimited scale. Everyone is watching, which means that giving offers unlimited impact on the biggest currency of our age: reputation.”
― Chris J. Anderson, Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading

“Bryan Stevenson’s spellbinding talk about injustice,”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“Persuasion is the act of replacing someone’s worldview with something better. And at its heart is the power of reason, capable of long-term impact. Reason is best accompanied by intuition pumps, detective stories, visuals, or other plausibility-priming devices.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“What are the concepts necessary to build your explanation?”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“the goal of a great talk is to build an idea inside someone’s mind, then explanation is the essential tool for achieving that goal.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“What do you assume your audience already knows?”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“Generosity starts with gratitude. When we pause for a moment, we can remember countless things we can be grateful for. If we make that a beautiful daily habit, it leads naturally to a desire to give back to the universe, to build generosity into our daily lives. This could be as simple as committing to one simple act of kindness every single day or devoting time to a cause we care about by volunteering, mentoring, or engaging in online advocacy.”
― Chris J. Anderson, Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading

“science writer John Bohannon”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

“We lust after material gain, confident it will bring us joy. Indeed, our anticipatory radar overstates what’s coming to us. The reality is that most material gains bring with them only short-term happiness. We then experience what’s called hedonic adaptation. That is, we simply become accustomed to whatever we’ve got and start looking for the next thing we might aspire to.”
― Chris J. Anderson, Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading