Wearable Technology

When you feel the impossibility of really thinking about the ten thousand year horizon, you’ve got to access that part in each of us which knows that the rational calculation is not the only reason we do things. We celebrate doing things that are plainly irrational—loving our children, loving our country, loving our planet—even though we’ll never see any of those things come to the perfection we imagine.”

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”.

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”

“We’ve had a loss of the sense of the frontier. We have to reclaim that.”

“Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly”

“It is often said that what people strive for is the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but it is worth bearing in mind that the greatest number have not yet been born. Therefore, when we speak about the greatest good, what we really mean is the longest good. There is not much we can do to improve the quality of life of those who are already dead on this island, but we can do immeasurable good to improve the quality of lives of those who will be born or come to live on this island. In order to give force to this notion of the longest good, we need to make the taking of long-term responsibility the most important political and cultural issue of our time.”

“We’ve got to start planning for the future and doing intelligent things, not the dumb things we’ve been doing. We are already in real trouble, but I like to liken it to a baseball game. Young people ask me, ‘Where do we stand?’ It’s the seventh inning. We’re down by two runs. The game’s not over. The game’s not over. We can still turn it around. We’ve gotta hold them right where we are by putting our best relief pitcher in, and we’ve gotta put three runs on the board in the last two innings. My first president of the Turner Foundation used to say, with a wink in his eye, ‘The situation is hopeless, but I could be wrong.’ If things are going to get turned around, young people are going to be the ones to do it, because my generation is worn out. We need a long-term plan for humanity. We need to be planning for a thousand years out.”

“I think our society is no longer properly valuing the intangible potential of innovation, even if we have to be a little uncomfortable with the risks associated with it, and a little bit willing to fail, pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off and try again. We don’t seem to want to do that as much as we used too.”