A biography for Rutger Bregmanhasn’t been written yet.
“In the past 20 years scientists from very diverse disciplines - anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, psychologists - have all moved to a much more hopeful, optimistic view of human nature.”
“I've solved my phone addiction by deleting all the apps I was addicted to - email, browser - and getting my wife to add parental controls, to limit access even further.”
“Basic income would give people the most important freedom: the freedom of deciding for themselves what they want to do with their lives.”
“I was born in 1988, one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and people of my generation were taught that utopian dreams are dangerous.”
“History will tell you that borders are not inevitable, they hardly existed at the end of the 19th century.”
“The world view of the underdog socialist is encapsulated in the notion that the establishment has mastered the game of reason, judgment and statistics, leaving the left with emotion. Its heart is in the right place.”
“If we assume the best in people, we can radically redesign our democracy and welfare states.”
“But I think 'Love, Actually' has a very realistic view of human nature in line with the latest scientific evidence. The opening scene, where Hugh Grant's character talks about the arrivals gate at Heathrow, is about friendship and connection, it's about who we really are as a species.”
“As our farms and factories grew more efficient, they accounted for a shrinking share of our economy. And the more productive agriculture and manufacturing became, the fewer people they employed.”
“Psychologists even have a term for this: they talk about 'mean world syndrome'. People who have just seen too much of the news have become more cynical, more pessimistic, more anxious, even more depressive. So, yeah, I think that is something you need to be wary of.”
“A lot of journalists help us to better understand the world by zooming out and sometimes zooming in on a really important case but sort of helping us to get a grasp of what are the structural forces that govern our lives and our societies and that is incredibly important.”
“We'll all remember 2020 as an historic year. And for decades, people will be able to say, remember 2020. Remember when things were really tough. Who did we rely on? I think that could impact a whole generation.”