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Maya Angelou
Poet and Historian
Maya Angelou: The dream of Martin Luther King, for me, represents the best the human being can hope for -- a world of peace, of development, a world of respect, a world where all men and women are valued, none higher than the other, none lower than the other because of his or her color or his or her race or his or her religion or cultural persuasion. That is the best we can hope for. And so when we speak of the dream, I think if Martin Luther King said he had a dream, I think this is the dream of America. This is us at our best.
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Maya Angelou
Poet and Historian
Maya Angelou: I don't know if we have really realized the dream yet. With the recent escalation of hate and violence and racism, I don't think it's fair to say that the dream has been realized. I think what we are obliged to do, rather, is continue to remember the dream, and continue to tell the children -- all our children -- that this is what has been dreamed for them. I think it is imperative that we take small black children and small white children and small Spanish-speaking children and small Asian children, take them into our laps, take them into our classrooms, take them into our homes, into the churches and synagogues and temples and mosques, and tell them that this is their country, it belongs to everyone equally. This is important. Tell them that they have already been paid for. It is very important for them to know that, so that they can feel, "Oh, the welfare of this country depends upon me thinking, and thinking deeply, and thinking correctly, and thinking fairly." This is important.
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Robert Ballard
Discoverer of the Titanic
I think everyone is unique. We know that. The only way you find out what you are is by trying everything, and then at some point you take what you are, which is unique. Don't ever try to mimic anybody, because you will only be second best. You can never outshine the thing you are trying to mimic, so don't ever do that. Don't idol worship. Finally, be yourself. Then you are going to be really unique and exciting. People are going to beat a path to your door if you polish your inner self.
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Jeff Bezos
Founder and CEO, Amazon.com
We all get to decide how we're going to go about making our own living and so on and so on. That happens to also be a very effective way of deploying an economy so that you get an economy which mostly makes sense. You know, things mysteriously -- because of that invisible hand -- tend to work out. I remember there was a time -- I may have these statistics slightly wrong -- a few years ago there was a heat wave in the South that killed three percent of chickens, and I think egg prices doubled because there were three percent fewer chickens. Well, that means that the number of chickens is roughly right, even though there's nobody deciding how many chickens there should be. So, that is a very interesting fact, I think, that a free market economy -- which by necessity involves a lot of liberty -- just happens to work well in terms of allocating resources. But, imagine a different world. Imagine a world where some incredibly artificially intelligent computer could actually do a better job than the invisible hand of allocating resources, and were to say, "There shouldn't be this many chickens, there should be this many chickens," just a few more or a few less. Well, that might even lead to more aggregate wealth. So, it might be a society that if you give up liberty, everybody could be a little wealthier. Now, the question that I would pose is, if that turned out to be the world, "Is that a good trade?" Personally, I don't think so. Personally I think it would be a terrible trade. And, I sometimes worry about that, because I think it's a coincidence that liberty tends to do such a good job of creating an economy that functions well.
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