One of the things that defines a TEDster is you've taken your passion, and you've turned it into stewardship. You actually put action to the issues you care about.

Letters actually work. Even the top dog himself takes time every day to read 10 letters that are picked out by staff. I can tell you that every official that I've ever worked with will tell you about the letters they get and what they mean.

When you start to think about politicians, you've got to realize these are strange creatures. Other than the fact that they can't tell directions, and they have very strange breeding habits, how do you actually work with these things?

Even before smart phones and the Internet, we had many ways to distract our selves. Now that's compounded by a factor of trillions.

I can't believe there will ever be a time when the book is truly obsolete. It is the perfect technology and feeds the soul.

Because of the rate of technology change, forecast horizons are shrinking.

A lot of our communication has now become digital, and it does not mimic the natural way we have evolved to communicate with each other, so it's almost like we have this muscle, these social-emotional skills, and they're atrophying, right?