If I say most people are pretty decent that may sound nice and warm but actually it's really radical and subversive and that's why, all throughout history, those who have advocated a more hopeful view of human nature - often the anarchists - have been persecuted.

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.

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.

It's important to make a distinction between the news and journalism. The news is about recent, incidental and sensational events. It's mostly about exceptions.

People are always yearning for a bigger story to be part of, it's not enough to live our own private lives.

Almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance, right? And of the rich just not paying their fair share.

My life philosophy is that you need a boring private life if you want to have a more exciting public life.

Most bayonets throughout history have probably not been used because soldiers just can't do it, something holds them back... the same goes for shooting the enemy. We've got this fascinating evidence from the Second World War, and also from other wars, that most soldiers couldn't do it.

A lot of great things are going on. In many ways, the past 30 years have been the best in world history. But we can do much better. I prefer the word hope over optimism.

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.

Poor people aren't making dumb decisions because they are dumb, but because they're living in a context in which anyone would make dumb decisions.

New ideas rarely come from the moderate parties in The Hague or Washington, in Brussels or Westminster. The world's political centres are not the breeding ground for true change, but rather where it comes home to roost.

Private companies mostly manufacture medications that resemble what we've already got. They get it patented and, with a hefty dose of marketing, a legion of lawyers, and a strong lobby, can live off the profits for years.

Bankers are the most obvious class of closet freeloaders, but they are certainly not alone. Many a lawyer and an accountant wields a similar revenue model.

In reality, it is the waste collectors, the nurses, and the cleaners whose shoulders are supporting the apex of the pyramid. They are the true mechanism of social solidarity.

The most daunting challenges of our times, from climate change to the ageing population, demand an entrepreneurial state unafraid to take a gamble.

Government isn't there just to administer life support to failing markets. Without the government, many of those markets would not even exist.

True innovation takes at least 10 to 15 years, whereas the longest that private venture capitalists are routinely willing to wait is five years. They don't join the game until all the riskiest plays have already been made - by governments.

Around the year 2000, countries such as France, the Netherlands and the US were already five times as wealthy as in 1930. Yet nowadays our biggest challenges are not leisure and boredom, but stress and uncertainty.

Since 1963, the University of Delaware's Disaster Research Center has conducted nearly 700 field studies on floods and earthquakes, and on-site research reveals the same results every time: the vast majority of people stay calm and help each other.

It matters so much that from a very early age we encounter different kinds of different people, because that's what real life should be about as well.

During the Enlightenment, there were brilliant thinkers who realized that, if you assume most people are naturally selfish and you construct the market around that, sometimes it can actually work for the common good. I just think that in many cases, it went too far.

A Dutchman can't easily get away from cheese. I was dropped into a cauldron of cheese when I was young.

My aspiration was to write a book that you could still read in 10 years. That's hard. Then you start doubting every sentence you write.