Floundering around, learning by doing but also by failing, is not only good but inevitable.

Some kinds of activists are more willing to try stuff out, see if works and think on their feet, but some of the people who are working on [change] find that very difficult: They've been schooled into thinking you have to come up with the perfect plan in advance. It has become a bit technocratic.

There's a tendency for people who believe passionately in something to be so convinced of their rightness that if they just repeat themselves a lot at the person, that will convince them. And that hasn't worked on things like immigration or trade deals.

What you don't do is just say, "I've got all the ideas and all the knowledge, and listen to me."

When you get talking to people in positions of power, you find that often their worldview is framed either in terms of their disciplinary studies at university and/or the country where they first got interest in development.

There are always pressures on decision-makers other than just what is right or what is wrong.

If you were disabled in Russia, you had to re-register every year, and it took up to six months to re-register, so people who lost limbs in Afghanistan had to prove that their leg hadn't grown back.