TED2008 Quotes – Great Quotes from this Year’s Speakers

I just love the whole TED concept. I imagine being there, in person, to hear so many great thinkers (and “unreasonable people” see below) with unbound imaginations would alter anyone’s own personal thinking, imagination, and reason. The possibilities truly do seem endless when you listen to many of the talks. I end up thinking a lot…how could I build on that. If you’ve even just looked at the topics that are available to watch on the TED site they you know it’s like the Discovery Channel and National Geographic wrapped into one great package and then shot with steroids. Okay, maybe that’s just me, but I am just in awe of the ideas that flow out of this place.

The TED blog has summarized some fabulous quotes from each day of this year’s event. You can certainly see them on their blog, but I’m going to capture them here as well for my own records.

Day 1

“Who are we? We’re just an upright, walking, big-brained, super-intelligent ape. ” – Paleontologist Louise Leakey

“The first thing we do when we’re born is we breathe in, and we cry. And the last thing we do when we die is we breathe out, and other people cry.” – Spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, before leading an exercise in breathing and meditation

“Western science is a major response to minor needs.” – Wade Davis quoting Mattheiu Ricard

“Why do I believe that it is transformative? It enables you to experience the universe. You can tour it, with astronomers as your guides. It will enable a new generation of stories and storytellers.” – Astronomer Roy Gould, while previewing Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope

“I think it is quite likely that we are the only intelligent civilization within several hundred light years” – Stephen Hawking

“I’m not blaming anyone. This is just who we are right now”. – Photographer Chris Jordan, whose large-format works illustrate statistics of modern life, like the 40 million paper cups used by Americans every day

“You go in as an individual, but emerge as a community which reaffirms its sense of place on the planet.” – Wade Davis, describing a traditional run through the Peruvian mountains, taking in peaks of 11,000 and 15,000 feet in 36 hours

“It’s as if my consciousness had shifted away. I could no longer define the boundaries of my body. Then I realize: I’m having a stroke. And my left hemisphere tells me: Wow, this is so cool; how many brain scientists have the chance to study that from the inside?” — Jill Taylor

“Before the Web, there was just one guy running around saying ‘I KNOW!'” – Robin Williams, ad-libbing, after taking the stage during a technical problem in the BBC World Debate

Day 2

“There have been bangs in the past. There will be bangs in the future. We may live in an endless universe.” – Physicist and TED Prize winner Neil Turok

“I have the modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry.” – Craig Venter, on his work creating synthetic lifeforms to generate alternative energy sources

“The line between good and evil is movable and it’s permeable.” – Psychologist Philip Zimbardo

“They’ve lowered the transaction cost of stopping genocide.” – Samantha Power on 1-900-GENOCIDE

“Chris Anderson is a computer-fabricated artifact.” – Paul Rothemund, joking about his work manipulating DNA, as if it were a computer program

“A lot of religious people prefer to be right, rather than compassionate.” – Religion scholar and TED prize winner Karen Armstrong

“ ‘Temes’ [technology-enhanced memes] don’t care about us – they simply want to create more of themselves. Don’t think we created the internet for our own benefit – think about temes spreading for themselves because they must.” – Susan Blackmore

“Beauty and truth do not reside in the object themseles, but rather in the nature of the exchange between the object and the viewer,” -Thomas Krens

“Whoa dude, nice equations!” – Garrett Lisi, the “surfer dude” physicist, introducing his talk by displaying an enormously complex equation on screen. He went on to explain his controversial “theory of everything” without using equations

Day 3

“Imagine Martin Luther King saying, ‘I have a dream … But I don’t know if the others will buy it.’” – Boston Philharmonic conductor Ben Zander, on the importance of persuasive leadership

“Human progress depends on unreasonable people. Reasonable people accept the world as they meet it; unreasonable people persist in trying to change it. Well, I’m Bob and I’m an unreasonable person. And if TED is anything, it is the olympics of unreasonable people.” – Musician and activist Bob Geldof (above)

“Why are we ignoring the oceans? Why does NASA spend in one year what NOAA will spend in 1600 years? Why are we looking up? Why are we afraid of the ocean?” – Ocean explorer Robert Ballard

“I think it’s the dopamine.” – Anthropologist Helen Fisher, explaining to Chris Anderson why she’s still optimistic about love, despite understanding its chemical and biological basis

“Relative to the universe, it’s just up the road.” – Physicist Brian Cox, after referring to Chicago as ‘just up the road’ from Monterey, CA

“If you think half of America votes badly because they are stupid or religious, you are trapped in a matrix … Take the red pill, learn some moral psychology and step outside the moral matrix.” – Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis

“If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between ‘for’ and ‘against’ is the mind’s worst disease.” – Jonathan Haidt, quoting Sent-ts’an, from 700CE China

“The job of the C is to make the B sad.” – Boston Philharmonic conductor Ben Zander, deconstructing a piece by Chopin

“How do we give credible hope to the billion poorest people in the world? It requires compassion to get ourselves started, and enlightened self-interest to get serious… If economic divergence continues, combined with global integration, it will build a nightmare for our children.” – Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion

“In order to solve the climate crisis, we need to solve the democracy crisis.” – Al Gore, urging citizen involvement not only on a personal level, but also on a political level

“How dare we be pessimistic? Maybe the future is better than it used to be.” – Peter Schwartz, co-founder of the Global Business Network

“It’s important to leave the security of who we are, and go to the place of who we are becoming. I encourage you to let yourself out of any prison you might find yourself in. Because we have to do something now. We have to change now.” – Environmental advocate John Francis (below), who went 17 years without speaking