Rich countries don't need as many children. We used to need kids to work in the fields as farm hands, to crawl on their bellies into coal mines. Well, kids are more like luxury objects now.

You need somebody to support the retirees. You need to pay into the pension plans. You need people to work at the hospitals, at the nursing homes.

... in the future a typical factory will host three workers: a man, a computer and a dog. The computer will do all the work. The man will feed the dog. And the dog's job? To bite the man - if he touches the computer.

The best way to achieve self-esteem is to do something worthy of esteem.

We're prosperous enough that we can afford to have one in six able-bodied men of working age sitting at home playing video games.

Rich countries don't need as many children. We used to need kids to work in the fields as farm hands, to crawl on their bellies into coal mines. Well, kids are more like luxury objects now.

When Teddy Roosevelt was around, there was an Ottoman Empire. There was a Habsburg empire. They controlled millions of people across Africa, the Middle East and Europe. And they're gone.Prosperity killed them, because they didn't have a way to hold the people together. They didn't have the rituals and the holidays and the pride in their country. And that's what we need if we're going to hold ourselves together during periods of prosperity.