Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think QUOTES

121 " I see no conflict between celebrating this progress and continuing to fight for more. "

― Hans Rosling , Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

123 " As long as there are plane crashes, preventable child deaths, endangered species, climate change deniers, male chauvinists, crazy dictators, toxic waste, journalists in prison, and girls not getting an education because of their gender, as long as any such terrible things exist, we cannot relax. "

― Hans Rosling , Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

125 " Paying too much attention to what is frightening rather than what is dangerous - that is, paying too much attention to fear - creates a tragic drainage of energy in the wrong direction. "

― Hans Rosling , Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

127 " At the weekend, I asked Niem to show me the monument to the Vietnam War. “You mean the ‘Resistance War Against America,’” he said. Of course, I should have realized he wouldn’t call it the Vietnam War. Niem drove me to one of the city’s central parks and showed me a small stone with a brass plate, three feet high. I thought it was a joke. The protests against the Vietnam War had united a generation of activists in the West. It had moved me to send blankets and medical equipment. More than 1.5 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans had died. Was this how the city commemorated such a catastrophe? Seeing that I was disappointed, Niem drove me to see a bigger monument: a marble stone, 12 feet high, to commemorate independence from French colonial rule. I was still underwhelmed. Then Niem asked me if I was ready to see the proper war monument. He drove a little way further, and pointed out of the window. Above the treetops I could see a large pagoda, covered in gold. It seemed about 300 feet high. He said, “Here is where we commemorate our war heroes. Isn’t it beautiful?” This was the monument to Vietnam’s wars with China. The wars with China had lasted, on and off, for 2,000 years. The French occupation had lasted 200 years. The “Resistance War Against America” took only 20 years. The sizes of the monuments put things in perfect proportion. It was only by comparing them that I could understand the relative insignificance of “the Vietnam War” to the people who now live in Vietnam. "

― Hans Rosling , Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

129 " Our brains often jump to swift conclusions without much thinking, which used to help us to avoid immediate dangers. We are interested in gossip and dramatic stories, which used to be the only source of news and useful information. We crave sugar and fat, which used to be life-saving sources of energy when food was scarce. We have many instincts that used to be useful thousands of years ago, but we live in a very different world now. "

― Hans Rosling , Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

131 " The 80/20 Rule It’s so easy to get things out of proportion, but luckily there are also some easy solutions. Whenever I have to compare lots of numbers and work out which are the most important, I use the simplest-ever thinking tool. I look for the largest numbers. That is all there is to the 80/20 rule. We tend to assume that all items on a list are equally important, but usually just a few of them are more important than all the others put together. Whether it is causes of death or items in a budget, I simply focus first on understanding those that make up 80 percent of the total. Before I spend time on the smaller ones, I ask myself: Where are the 80 percent? Why are these so big? What are the implications? For example, here’s a list of the world’s energy sources, in alphabetical order: biofuels, coal, gas, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, oil, solar, wind. Presented like that, they all seem equally important. If we instead sort them according to how many units of energy they generate for humanity, three outnumber all the rest, as this graph shows. "

― Hans Rosling , Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

133 " people on Level 4 paying for ReliefWeb are the same people we asked about the trend in natural disasters. Ninety-one percent of them are unaware of the success they are paying for because their journalists continue to report every disaster as if it were the worst. The long, elegantly dropping trend line, a bit of fact-based hope, they think is not newsworthy. "

― Hans Rosling , Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

135 " What you are about to read was not invented according to the “lone genius” stereotype. It is instead the result of constant discussion, argument, and collaboration between three people with different talents, knowledge, and perspectives. This unconventional, often infuriating, but deeply productive way of working has led to a way of presenting the world and how to think about it, that I never could have created on my own. "

― Hans Rosling , Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

137 " You need the generalization instinct to live your everyday life, and occasionally it can save you from having to eat something disgusting. We always need categories. The challenge is to realize which of our simple categories are misleading—like “developed” and “developing” countries—and replace them with better categories, like the four levels. "

― Hans Rosling , Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

139 " The safest lives in history are lived today by people on Level 4. Most preventable risks have been eliminated. Still, many walk around feeling worried. "

― Hans Rosling , Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think