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“If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.” — Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” — Ken Robinson

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity 

 

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  “There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.” — Susan Cain

  Susan Cain: The power of introverts

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “Whatever happens, whether you succeed or you fail, people with high expectations always feel better, because how we feel — when we get dumped or we win employee of the month — depends on how we interpret that event.” — Tali Sharot

  Tali Sharot: The optimism bias

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “There are thousands and thousands of people out there leading lives of quiet, screaming desperation, where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hate to enable them to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.” — Nigel Marsh

  Nigel Marsh: How to make work-life balance work
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  “Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.” — Brené Brown

  Brené Brown: Listening to shame

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “If we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average.” — Shawn Achor

  Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work

  
  

  
  

   
   
• “Our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by … not paying attention?” — Joshua Foer

  Joshua Foer: Feats of memory anyone can do

  
  

  
  

  
  

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  “Maybe stories are just data with a soul.” — Brené Brown

  Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability

   
• “The secret to happiness is low expectations.” — Barry Schwartz

  Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice

  
  

  
  
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  “Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.” — Karen Armstrong

  Karen Armstrong: Let's revive the Golden Rule

  
  

  
  

  
  

   
• “Don't assume that what we currently think is out there is the full story. Go after the dark matter, in whatever field you choose to explore.” — Nathan Wolfe

  Nathan Wolfe: What's left to explore?

  
  

  
  

  
  
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  “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
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  “People don’t buy what you do; people buy why you do it.” — Simon Sinek

  Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “Very many people go through their whole lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of.” — Ken Robinson

  Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “My wife could turn to me and she may say, ‘Why do you love me?’ And I can with all honesty look her in the eye and say, ‘Because our pheromones matched our olfactory receptors.’” — Robin Ince

  Robin Ince: Science versus wonder?

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “The feeling that ‘no one is listening to me’ make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.” — Sherry Turkle

  Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone?

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “[Images of the brain] are very beautiful, but they're also very powerful. They have great explanatory power.” — Carl Schoonover

  Carl Schoonover: How to look inside the brain

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “I am the life-force power of the universe. I am the life-force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form, at one with all that is.” — Jill Bolte Taylor

  Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight

  
  

  
  
• “The circumstances of our lives actually matter less to our happiness than the sense of control we feel over our lives.” — Rory Sutherland

  Rory Sutherland: Perspective is everything

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• “Connection and love: … We all want it. Most people settle for connection because love’s too scary.” — Tony Robbins

  Tony Robbins asks why we do what we do

  
  

  
  

  
  
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  “The number of children is not growing any longer in the world. We are still debating peak oil, but we have definitely reached peak child.” — Hans Rosling

  Hans Rosling: Religions and babies

  
  

  
  
   
   
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  “We are living on average today 34 years longer than our great-grandparents did.” — Jane Fonda

  Jane Fonda: Life's third act

  
  

  
  

  
  
   
• “The next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not think about something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot for the next 30 days?” — Matt Cutts

  Matt Cutts: Try something new for 30 days

  
  

  
  
• “[It’s] the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality. And if we can change the lens, not only can we change your happiness, we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time.” — Shawn Achor

  Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “Vulnerability pushed, I pushed back. I lost the fight, but probably won my life back.” — Brené Brown

  Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability

  
  

  
  

   
  
• “We're optimistic about ourselves, we're optimistic about our kids, we're optimistic about our families, but we're not so optimistic about the guy sitting next to us.” — Tali Sharot

  Tali Sharot: The optimism bias

  
  

  
  

  
  
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  “The law can seem remote, arcane, the stuff of specialists. But it isn't, because for those of us who live in democracies, the law begins with us.” — Shereen El Feki

  Shereen El-Feki: HIV -- how to fight an epidemic of bad laws

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “The first follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself. … The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.” — Derek Sivers

  Derek Sivers: How to start a movement

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “[I am] not even two bites into breakfast, and there are already nearly 25 sites that are tracking me. I have navigated to a total of four.” — Gary Kovacs

  Gary Kovacs: Tracking the trackers

  
  

  
  

  
  

   
   
• “So you’re six years old, you’re reading ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,’ and it becomes rapidly obvious that there are only two kinds of men in the world: dwarves and Prince Charmings. And the odds are seven to one against your finding the prince.” — Emily Levine

  Emily Levine's theory of everything

  
  

  
  
• “That opting out [of creativity] that happens in childhood … moves in and becomes more ingrained by the time you get to adult life.” — David Kelley

  David Kelley: How to build your creative confidence

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “Beauty and seduction, I believe, is nature’s tool for survival, because we will protect what we fall in love with.” — Louie Schwartzberg

  Louie Schwartzberg: The hidden beauty of pollination

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “Your child will live a life ten years younger than you because of the landscape of food that we’ve built around them.” — Jamie Oliver

  Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “It’s one of the characteristics of a leader that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he’s leading to realize whatever he’s dreaming.” — Benjamin Zander

  Benjamin Zander on music and passion

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
• “What’s it like to be a baby? It’s like being in love in Paris for the first time after you’ve had three double espressos.” — Alison Gopnik

  Alison Gopnik: What do babies think?

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