Asian culture has a profoundly different relationship to work. It rewards people who are persistent.

What must underlie successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus.

If you don't contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you're not thinking.

Without the New York Times, there is no blog community. They'd have nothing to blog about.

Activism that challenges the status quo, that attacks deeply rooted problems, is not for the faint of heart.

People who bring transformative change have courage, know how to re-frame the problem and have a sense of urgency.

Take a random group of 8-year-old American and Japanese kids, give them all a really, really hard math problem, and start a stopwatch. The American kids will give up after 30, 40 seconds. If you let the test run for 15 minutes, the Japanese kids will not have given up. You have to take it away.