It's actually more than 700 case studies that show that, especially in times of crisis, we show our best selves. And we get this explosion of altruism and cooperation. This happens again and again after natural disasters, after earthquakes and after floodings.

Poverty is not a lack of character. Poverty is a lack of cash.

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.

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.

I know that there are many excellent arguments for a universal form of basic income. Since everyone would get it, it would remove the stigma that dogs recipients of assistance and 'entitlements'.

Most of Mark Zuckerberg's income is just rent collected off the millions of picture and video posts that we give away daily for free. And sure, we have fun doing it. But we also have no alternative - after all, everybody is on Facebook these days.

Since long workdays lead to more errors, shorter workdays could reduce accidents. Overtime is deadly. Tired surgeons have been found to be more prone to slip'ups, and soldiers who get too little shuteye are more prone to miss targets.

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.

Believing in the good of humanity is a revolutionary act - it means that we don't need all those managers and CEO's, kings and generals. That we can trust people to govern themselves and make their own decisions.

There's always selfish behavior. There are lots of examples of people hoarding. But we've seen in this pandemic that the vast majority of behavior from normal citizens is actually pro-social in nature. People are willing to help their neighbors.

History will tell you that borders are not inevitable, they hardly existed at the end of the 19th century.

Nowadays excessive work and pressure are status symbols. Time to oneself is sooner equated with unemployment and laziness, certainly in countries where the wealth gap has widened.

But the underdog socialists' biggest problem isn't that they are wrong. They are not. Their biggest problem is that they're dull. Dull as a doorknob. They've got no story to tell; nor even the language to convey it in.

I think it's rational to assume the best in other people because most people are pretty decent.

Maybe utopianism is my form of religion in a world without God.

Literally every single sliver of technology that makes the iPhone a smartphone instead of a stupidphone - internet, GPS, touchscreen, battery, hard drive, voice recognition - was developed by researchers on the government payroll.

Since the 70s and the 80s you see the rise of neoliberalism. The central dogma of neoliberalism was that most people are selfish. So, we started designing our institutions around that idea, our schools, our workplaces, our democracies. The government became less and less important.

There is certainly a longstanding idea within western culture that civilization is only a thin veneer. As soon as something happens, say a war or a natural disaster or an epidemic like we're going through right now, the worst comes out in each of us.

I've been thinking that school, or certainly the traditional English public school model, is like a prison, in that you can't get out and it is hierarchical. As a result they have a lot of bullying. On the other hand if you mix ages and academic ability this is less of a problem.

We know from scientific studies that infants as young as six months old can distinguish right from wrong and have a preference for the good over the bad. I think it's important to design our education and our schools around that insight, to bring out the best in our kids.

Instead of a universal basic income, we could have a basic income guarantee. Or, as economists prefer to call it, a negative income tax.

I first read 'Lord of the Flies' as a teenager. I remember feeling disillusioned afterwards, but not for a second did I think to doubt Golding's view of human nature.

Our streets are very important for social cohesion, for feelings of safety, and we just surrendered all this to the car. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Only the work that generates money is allowed to count toward GDP. Little wonder, then, that we have organized education around feeding as many people as possible in bite-size flexible parcels into the employment establishment.