In no particular order I present quotes from the event which either made me reflect, ponder, question or dream. (I have only added links for the people who were speakers at the event – the other quotes were part of either the work book or presentations)
1. “Every morning is the beginning of a brand new day. You have been given this new day to use it as you want. You can waste it, or use it for good. What you choose is important, because you are exchanging a day of your life for it! When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever. In its place is something that you have left behind. Let it be worth it!
2. “If there is a hole in the boat – it does not matter if you have the cabin on it.” Mr Kofi Annan
3. “Again some questions to answer. The first answer that comes to mind will be interesting; the second that comes to mind will be very smart. The third answer that comes to mind might well be the truth. Find your third answer.”
4. “The problem is not how to get new thoughts into your head – but how to get the old one’s out.”
5. “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”
6. “We live in a time of profound turbulence” Peter Schwartz – Futurist and world wide web user #70
7. “By 2030 70% of the worlds population will live in cities and the most likely source of conflict in the future is over water.” Peter Schwartz – childhood friend to Steven Spielberg and adviser to movies such as the Minority Report.
8. “Prosperity – Peace – Sustainability must go hand in hand – it is not one at the expense of another – we only have one planet.”
9. When asked, “What should we teach our children?” Kofi Annan answered “Give them the right set of values, and start early. Character is everything. It is extremely important. Teach your children to be true to themselves.”
10. “It is necessary to the happiness of a man that he be mentally faithful to himself.” Kofi Annan.
11. When asked about what it was like to sit and negotiate with dictators he responded “when the man sitting across from you is a murderer, a person who kills people and the only tool I had was persuasion – you do it because you know that you will leave a better human being – and maybe have made a difference.”
12. In 1974 as an experimental atomic physicist at the University of Oxford, Joshua Silver asked himself the question “Why are there 3 billion people on the planet who need glasses and they can’t get them?” So began his life journey to develop cheap, self-adjusting glasses that could be manufactured for a dollar and distributed through existing world health organizations. So far he has 40,000 self-adjusting glasses in the field being tested – but they still cost around $19 to produce. Here is a man who is asking the big question. (see TED talk inserted below)
13. “At the end, entrepreneurship is not about wearing expensive suits and earning a lot of money. It is all about being true to yourself, to your values in life. Your dreams.” Richard Branson
14. “ To be an entrepreneur is the degree to which you can handle uncertainty.” Peter Sage.
15. “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need women and men who can dream of things that never were.” JFK
16. “Our legacy is to teach our children to move their value set from individual/greed to collective/generosity. There is only one people, there is only one planet”
17. “Who dares to get lost discovers new roads.”
18. “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” Morpheus – The Matrix movie
19. “Even the wisest mind has something yet to learn.” George Santayana
20. “Possibilities do not add up they multiply.”
21. “We don’t do this because it is easy we do this because it is hard.” JFK
22. Entrepreneurs don’t wait – they shape their own world – the bigger the challenge the greater the opportunity.
23. “To dream anything that you want to dream, that’s the beauty of the human mind. To do anything that you want to do, that is the strength of the entrepreneurial spirit.”
24. “Surround yourself with people who are only going to lift you higher.” Oprah Winfrey.
25. “I learned the power of conviction, the potential of community, and the imperative of action.” Chris Turner springwise.com
Top 25 insights from Entrepreneurship Conference
