Severe poverty is getting better by some measures, but it's also becoming ever more scandalous because it is now so easily avoidable.

It seems far-fetched, even preposterous, to blame the global economic order for the persistence of severe poverty in countries that are ruled by obvious thugs and crooks.

Income inequality matters more on a day-to-day basis. Wealth matters more for political influence.

Whatever we, as prospective participants unaware of our specific features, would desire society to be like is what, morally speaking, we ought to institute.

Economics is like a church, and it fulfills the same function the church had fulfilled for centuries: the justification of the status quo.

We live in a world where economic positions - income and wealth - are very unevenly distributed, and this leads to the widespread persistence of poverty.

Large companies are very good at solving extremely complex problems in a globally optimal way.

The Bank and the media continue to propagate the story that the global elite wishes to be told: that the number of poor has declined by 24 percent in those 15 years [1990-2005].

The collective income of all these people - the bottom half - is less than three percent of global household income, and so there is a grotesque maldistribution of income and wealth.

What is really nice about the Health Impact Fund is that it is a win-win, something that without much cost to anyone makes a lot of people better off.

Domestic power structures are shaped in good part by global arrangements.

Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.

Shannon: Only the living suffered. Only they were riddled with guilt and regret and unanswered questions.

Somebody who can reckon with the past, who can live with the past in the present, and move towards the future - that's fabulous.

Regret, Daisy knew, was the only confirmation of a well-lived life. If you didn't occasionally go too far, you weren't going anywhere.

Criticism shouldn't be a performance that upstages the work it's talking about.

The more humanity owes the poor man, the more society denies him.

There's an absolute prejudice that good movies are dramas and comedies are more dismissable. But I couldn't disagree more.

Ask for what you want. Believe that you deserve it, and then allow Life to give it to you.

Design in nature is but a concatenation of accidents, culled by natural selection until the result is so beautiful or effective as to seem a miracle of purpose.

Never indulge in people who follow a negative path because they will take you with them on the road of ruin. Show them the way to positivism even if there's a risk of losing their friendship.