Home > Work > Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man
1 " people don’t do what they say they believe, they do what’s convenient and then they repent, "
― Rory Sutherland , Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man
2 " if you had retroactively applied the rules of scientific rationalism to all of the major scientific discoveries of the past 500 years you would have invalidated most of them. Perhaps most (penicillin, the X-Ray, the microwave, Aspirin, radio, Archimedes in the bath) were the product of “inspired opportunism”. As he once put it: “a methodology was an ideology Galileo could not afford. "
3 " Henry Ford’s reaction to a consultant who questioned why he paid $50,000 a year to someone who spent most of his time with his feet on his desk. “Because a few years ago that man came up with something that saved me $2,000,000,” he replied. “And when he had that idea his feet were exactly where they are now. "
4 " The most dangerous people were the stupid and energetic people because they’ll always do things and because they’re stupid they’ll do stupid things. "
5 " Footballers, who may earn a few hundred thousand pounds a week, come home to their eager WAGs and a stable full of Bentleys and find the most enjoyable thing they can do is play Grand Theft Auto — something you can buy for £20. "
6 " The advice I would give to anybody is to be good at two things, not one, know about two things rather than one, and if possible make the two things overlap a bit. "
7 " I was once booked on a time management course and got the date wrong. "
8 " Or take the value of Wikipedia. The creation of this is more or less akin to installing a Bodleian library in every house in Britain. Does this massive new wealth register on GDP figures? Not a blip. Or the new availability of blogs and podcasts. Tremendous writers who, just a decade ago, would have been lecturing to half-empty theatres are now read by hundreds of thousands. Again, almost no money changes hands, so not a wiggle in the GDP figures. "
9 " To put a value on the digital world by only tallying the money that changes hands is a little like trying to place a value on sex by simply measuring the amount spent on prostitution. "
10 " a rich man is anyone who earns more than his wife’s sister’s husband.”) "
11 " Andy Warhol about Coke: “The President of the United States can only get the same Coke as the bum in the street "
12 " A good scientist (DT quoted Einstein) will acknowledge that more than 50% of scientific breakthroughs are reached through post-rationalised ideas, not through sequential logic. "
13 " I think the first role of marketing is to make a decision easy to make. And that mean firstly clarity in terms of choice, and secondly it means lack of anxiety. So the first role of marketing is not actually getting preference, it’s not actually getting someone to prefer a Philips TV, it’s getting someone non-anxious about buying a Philips. "
14 " To what extent are our wants and desires shaped contextually by the lifestyles of those around us, rather than by any absolute need? "
15 " All that property porn, you know, about people buying a flat, doing it up and making thirty grand, it’ll just turn the whole bloody country into a nation of speculators, all the while making property completely unaffordable for anybody under 40. The average age of a first time buyer in the Thatcher era, about ‘84, was 25, it’s now 39. "
16 " I think if you set out to build a great business, you’ll stand a fair chance of building a great brand. I am not equally confident that someone aspiring to build a great brand will build a great business. "
17 " Property porn: The unquestioned assumption, widely propagated in countless television programmes, that home improvement is the highest form of self improvement. If we never again see another programme in which some vapid idiots mince around redecorating a house, our lives will have gone up in value by over 30% "
18 " Holidays in far-flung places: In an effort to upstage each other, rich people were obliged to visit increasingly far-flung and dangerous parts of the world on holiday. Machu Picchu is, in truth, a collection of ruined buildings that would be fairly irritating to visit even if you weren’t forced to suffer altitude sickness in order to do it. As Dr Johnson said of the Devil’s Causeway: “Worth seeing, but not worth going to see. "
19 " Before we adopt US working practices, we should remind ourselves that the white American genetic make-up is exclusively drawn from the most restless, obsessive, zealous, neurotic and friendless 5% of the European population. The reason the Pilgrim Fathers were forced to leave these shores had little to do with religion — it was because nobody liked them. "
20 " As one creative (Chris Wilkins?) remarked to a planner:“You and I both drink from the same well of inspiration. The difference is that you get to piss in it first. "
