Hans Rosling

Well, the truth is I'm very scared for people to dislike me. I have conflict-avoidance.

Fame is easy to acquire; impact is much more difficult.

My interest is not data, it's the world. And part of world development you can see in numbers. Others, like human rights, empowerment of women, it's very difficult to measure in numbers.

To get away from poverty, you need several things at the same time: school, health, and infrastructure - those are the public investments. And on the other side, you need market opportunities, information, employment, and human rights.

Fame is a dangerous thing. It's what the post-industrial society wants. They want fame and many followers on Twitter. But to really make the world understandable, that challenge is remaining.

Good analysis is very useful when you want to convert a political decision into an investment. It can also go the other way and drive policy.

Data allow your political judgments to be based on fact, to the extent that numbers describe realities.

The 1 to 2 billion poorest in the world, who don't have food for the day, suffer from the worst disease: globalization deficiency. The way globalization is occurring could be much better, but the worst thing is not being part of it. For those people, we need to support good civil societies and governments.

I've done a lot of practical anthropology, living in villages with people and realizing how difficult it is to get out of poverty. When in poverty, people use their skill to avoid hunger. They can't use it for progress.

There's still racism. Western Europe... has taken the native cultures of the Americas, the African cultures, the Asian civilization and lumped them together into The Others.

You have to fit in sometimes to make people comfortable to listen to you.

When I have an argument with someone, even with someone I am not very close with, I can't sleep at night thinking about it. It's terrible. But I still manage speak out frankly because I have also been gifted with the ability to read people. I can sense when they start to get irritated with me, and then, I shift.