Birth: 1922
Floundering around, learning by doing but also by failing, is not only good but inevitable..
Somewhere like Russia or China, decision-makers have far fewer constraints on acting than in more open systems..
You have a huge number of people who spend their time writing papers which show that migrants pay more to the country than they take out in benefits,….
The post-Second World War simple system of social democracy and organized labour has fragmented massively, but just because people aren't organized i….
What you don't do is just say, "I've got all the ideas and all the knowledge, and listen to me.".
There's a tendency for people who believe passionately in something to be so convinced of their rightness that if they just repeat themselves a lot a….
In the end, that's a blind alley - we have to get back to being able to think on our feet and react..
The death of deference seems to be general at the moment, so everybody has to earn their reputation and trust all over again. You don't just get it b….
People are saying, "I have a right to my opinion. Don't just keep condescending, telling me what to think." There's something slightly liberating abo….
The question, "When did you last listen to a poor person properly and try to understand what's going on inside their own experience?" enables you to ….
There are always pressures on decision-makers other than just what is right or what is wrong..
I keep coming back to the phrase "Dance with the system" - not just march onwards no matter what happens..
If you were disabled in Russia, you had to re-register every year, and it took up to six months to re-register, so people who lost limbs in Afghanist….
Economists who studied in the '80s tend to have a pretty crude neoclassical view that's just about freeing up prices and markets, and then you'll get….
In any system, there will be change happening without you..
Some kinds of activists are more willing to try stuff out, see if works and think on their feet, but some of the people who are working on [change] f….
We should look at how "the enemy" - people that you wouldn't necessarily agree with - have done change and see whether there's bits in there that we ….
When we do work in places like China and Vietnam, research tends to be really effective as a way of getting change, whereas in more open places, mobi….
There's a diversion between economic reality - integration, global village, everybody depending on everybody else - and cultural reality, which is pe….
Lots of people in the open system are very determined to try and strengthen evidence-based policy..
Until you have looked in depth at the system and found out where women in Egypt are not being cut through female genital mutilation, or where kids in….