Zermatt Summit > Zermatt's Quotes

“You cannot force commitment, what you can do…You nudge a little here, inspire a little there, and provide a role model.  Your primary influence is the environment you create.”
― Peter Senge

“To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible.”
― Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms

“If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing the problem and finding the solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility. But charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences.”
― Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty

“Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions.”
― Jim Collins, How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In

“A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.”
― Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

“It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one—not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses — ever makes it alone.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“The challenge I set before anyone who condemns private-sector business is this: If you are a socially conscious person, why don't you run your business in a way that will help achieve social objectives?”
― Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty

“The fact that the poor are alive is clear proof of their ability.”
― Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty

“Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.”
― James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds

“Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies.”
― Joseph E. Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work

“Se necesitan políticas para un crecimiento sostenible, equitativo y democrático. Esta es la razón del desarrollo. El desarrollo no consiste en ayudar a unos pocos individuos a enriquecerse o en crear un puñado de absurdas industrias protegidas que solo benefician a la elite del país; no consiste en traer a Prada y Benetton, Ralph Lauren o Louis Vuitton para los ricos de las ciudades, abandonando a los pobres del campo de su miseria. El que se pudieran comprar bolsos de Gucci en los grandes almacenes de Moscú no significo que el país se había vuelto una economía de mercado. El desarrollo consiste en transformar las sociedades, mejorar las vidas de los pobres, permitir que todos tengan la oportunidad de salir adelante y acceder a la salud y a la educación. Este tipo de desarrollo no tendrá lugar si sólo unos pocos dictan las políticas que deberá seguir un país. Conseguir que se tomen decisiones democráticas quiere decir garantizar que un abanico de economistas, funcionarios y expertos de los países en desarrollo estén activamente involucrados en el debate. También implica una amplia participación que va bastante más allá de los expertos y los políticos. Los países en desarrollo deben tomar las riendas de su propio porvenir. Pero nosotros en occidente no podemos eludir nuestras responsabilidades”
― Joseph Stiglitz

“The budgetary cost to the UK of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2010 will total more than £18 billion. If we include the social costs the total impact will exceed £20 billion.”
― Joseph Stiglitz, The Three Trillion Dollar War

“Overborrowing or overlending? Lenders encourage indebtedness because it is profitable. Developing country governments are sometimes even pressured to overborrow ... Even without corruption, it is easy to be influenced by Western businessmen and financiers ... Countries that aren't sure that borrowing is worth the rist are told how important it is to establis a credit rating: borrow even if you really don't need the money.”
― Joseph E. Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work

“I became convinced that the advanced industrial countries, through international organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the World Bank, were not only not doing all that they could to help these [developing] countries but were sometimes making their life more difficult. IMF programs had clearly worsened the East Asian crisis, and the "shock therapy" they had pushed in the former Soviet Union and its satellites played an important role in the failure of the transition.”
― Joseph E. Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work

“Certainly, the poverty, the discrimination, the episodic unemployment could not but strike an inquiring youngster: why did these exist, and what could we do about them”
― Joseph E. Stiglitz

“Perfect is the enemy of good.”
― Voltaire

“the bad leader is he who the people despise; the good leader is he who the people praise; the great leader is he who the people say, "We did it ourselves”
― Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
― Desmond Tutu

“Things always become obvious after the fact”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.”
― Benoît Mandelbrot

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“We have always known that heedless self interest was bad morals, we now know that it is bad economics.”
― Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.”
― Pierre Dos Utt, Tanstaafl: A Plan for a New Economic World Order

“1 billion people in the world are chronically hungry. 1 billion people are overweight.”
― Mark Bittman, Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes

“An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.”
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

“If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.”
― John Maynard Keynes