complaining is so boring

“If your world is not enchanted, you’re not paying attention.”

Optimism is unfashionable today, particularly among intellectuals. Everyone makes fun of it. Someone said "Pessimists got that way by financing optimists." But I am not pessimistic and I advise you not to be. As the fellow said, "I'd be a pessimist but it would never work."

The young people at my table were anxious about money: starter-job salaries, high rents, student loans. But they never worried about freezing in their home. They could go to the sink and get a glass of clean water without fear of getting sick. Most of all, they were alive . In 1800, when Jefferson was elected president, more than one out of four ch

Jefferson was one of the richest men in the new United States. He had a 5,000-acre plantation worked by hundreds of slaves, a splendid mansion in Virginia that he had designed himself, one of the biggest wine collections in America, and one of the greatest private libraries in the world — it became the foundation of the Library of Congress. But des

if anybody thinks it was better back in 1955 for women or people who were gay or people who got, you know, heart disease or cancer, I mean, it’s just insane. You know, the big headline is people are living longer, people are learning more, people are more literate.

You know, absent solving some of these big problems, things are going to be so much better off. Alzheimer's, obesity, you know; we'll have a cure for HIV. We will have gotten rid of polio, measles, malaria. You know, the pace of innovation is greater today than ever. I'm lucky I still get to back incredibly smart people who are doing all of that wo