Persistence. Change doesn't happen overnight. You have to stay with it. Rosa Parks helped start the Civil Rights movement in earnest in 1955. Then it was nearly a decade until the Civil Rights Act was passed.

After Hurricane Katrina, I wanted to go back to New Orleans to help musicians return to the city. But Andrew Young advised me, "If you want to help people, go work at an investment bank." His contrarian advice opened my eyes to the importance of capital. "Learn how to make some money before you give it away." I learned that you can bring about good in the world especially if you have a paycheck.

I don't think money can be understood through a lens limited to economics. And most books about money tell you the history of money, the instrument. But money is also an idea, one that we exchange to survive.

For the last several decades, there was a prevailing belief among traditional economists that the markets were rational and self-correcting. Alan Greenspan advocated this view. But the 2008 financial crisis showed that this view is incorrect, and Greenspan eventually admitted as much.

Social standing and reptuation has always mattered, but now it 's happening on a global basis.

All organisms rely on exchange. They form symbiotic partnerships in order to obtain the energy that they need to survive. Energy is the currency of nature.

In some cultures, when you give someone a gift, it's expected that they will pass it on. This seems like a peculiar practice in the West, but in many other societies, a gift has a spirit. If you try to possess the gift, you remove its spirit as a gift.