Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.
Bill GatesRead
The media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes how the media often overlooks ongoing suffering due to its complex nature, leading people to ignore serious issues.
Bill Gates expresses a profound observation about the media's focus on the 'new' and how the ongoing suffering of millions can become background noise in public consciousness. He highlights the difficulty people face in confronting complex problems, which often leads to a tendency to look away rather than engage with these issues. This reflection invites us to consider our own reactions to suffering and the societal mechanisms that allow such issues to be ignored.
Themes
MediaSufferingComplexityIgnoranceAwareness
In practice
Example use cases
During a charity event, to emphasize the importance of keeping global suffering in view.
More from Bill Gates
All quotes →The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
Bill GatesRead
With the states release today of a set of clear and consistent academic standards, our nation is one step closer to supporting effective teaching in every classroom, charting a path to college and careers for all students, and developing the tools to help all children stay motivated and engaged in their own education. The more states that adopt these college and career based standards, the closer we will be to sharing innovation across state borders and becoming more competitive as a country.
Bill GatesRead
About three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.
Bill GatesRead
Internet TV and the move to the digital approach is quite revolutionary. TV has historically has been a broadcast medium with everybody picking from a very finite number of channels.
Bill GatesRead
These four policy prescriptions - strengthening educational opportunities, revamping immigration rules for highly skilled workers, increasing federal funding for basic scientific research, and providing incentives for private-sector R&D - should in my view be top priorities as Congress and the Administration consider how to maintain the nation's leadership in science, technology, and innovation.
Bill GatesRead
Similar quotes
While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive.
Sam HarrisRead
Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad.
DiogenesRead
One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.
Thomas MannRead
I feel very strongly that I’m surrounded by other realities.
Ingmar BergmanRead
A person who has not completely lost the memory of paradise, even though it is a faint one, will suffer endlessly. He will feel the call of the essential world, will hear the voice that comes from so far away that one cannot find out where it comes from, a voice that cannot guide him.
Eugene IonescoRead
The dream remains overloaded with the badly lived passions of daytime life. Solitude in the nocturnal dream is always a hostility. It is strange. It isn't really our solitude.
Gaston BachelardRead