I can’t help thinking that if the American West were discovered today, the most glorious bits would be sold off to the highest bidder. Yosemite might be nothing but weekend homes for Internet tycoons. – Nicholas Kristof
The ice bucket challenge went viral in 2014, partly because it was so much fun to watch videos of celebrities or friends dumping ice water on their heads. Videos of people in the challenge have been watched more than 10 billion times on Facebook – more than once per person on the planet. – Nicholas Kristof
Technology companies must constantly weigh ethical decisions: Where should Facebook set its privacy defaults, and should it tolerate glimpses of nudity? Should Twitter close accounts that seem sympathetic to terrorists? How should Google handle sex and violence, or defamatory articles? – Nicholas Kristof
What use could the humanities be in a digital age? University students focusing on the humanities may end up, at least in their parents’ nightmares, as dog-walkers for those majoring in computer science. But, for me, the humanities are not only relevant but also give us a toolbox to think seriously about ourselves and the world. – Nicholas Kristof
The great divide is not between faiths, but one between intolerant zealots of any tradition and the large numbers of decent, peaceful believers likewise found in each tradition. – Nicholas Kristof
Beware of generalizations about any faith because they sometimes amount to the religious equivalent of racial profiling. Hinduism contained both Gandhi and the fanatic who assassinated him. – Nicholas Kristof
There’s something to be said for CEOs’ entering politics: In theory, they have management expertise and financial savvy. Then again, it didn’t work so well with Dick Cheney. – Nicholas Kristof
Every high school and college graduate in America should, I think, have some familiarity with statistics, economics and a foreign language such as Spanish. Religion may not be as indispensable, but the humanities should be a part of our repertory. They may not enrich our wallets, but they do enrich our lives. They civilize us. They provide context. – Nicholas Kristof
You no more have the right to risk others by failing to vaccinate than you do by sending your child to school with a hunting knife. Vaccination isn’t a private choice but a civic obligation. – Nicholas Kristof
There are very few things I’ve done just twice in my life, 40 years apart, and one is to backpack on the Pacific Crest Trail across the California/Oregon border. – Nicholas Kristof
In Angola, I visited ‘HeroRats’ that have been trained to sniff out land mines (and, in some countries, diagnose tuberculosis). In a day, they can clear 20 times as much of a minefield as a human, and they work for bananas! – Nicholas Kristof
In America, we have subsidized private jets, big banks and hedge fund managers. Wouldn’t it make more sense to subsidize kids? – Nicholas Kristof
When I was born in 1959, the hospital in which I arrived had separate floors for black babies and white babies, and it was then illegal for blacks and whites to marry in many states. – Nicholas Kristof
For all Trump’s criticisms of government, his family wealth came from feeding at the government trough. His father, Fred Trump, leveraged government housing programs into a construction business; the empire was founded on public money. – Nicholas Kristof
Zimbabwe has far fewer tourists than South Africa or Kenya, and there’s less crime as well. – Nicholas Kristof
Humans pull together in an odd way when they’re in the wilderness. It’s astonishing how few people litter and how much they help one another. Indeed, the smartphone app to navigate the Pacific Crest Trail, Halfmile, is a labor of love by hikers who make it available as a free download. – Nicholas Kristof
At some point, extra incomes don’t go to sate desires but to attempt to buy status through ‘positional goods’ – like the hottest car on the block. The problem is that there can only be one hottest car on the block. – Nicholas Kristof
Numeracy isn’t a sign of geekiness, but a basic requirement for intelligent discussions of public policy. – Nicholas Kristof
Maybe our best family trip started at Victoria Falls, which drenches you with spray and is so vast that it makes Niagara Falls seem like a backyard creek. Then we rented a car and made our way to Hwange National Park, which was empty of people but crowded with zebras, giraffes, elephants and more. – Nicholas Kristof
Gays and lesbians began to gain civil rights when Americans realized that their brothers, cousins, daughters were gay. – Nicholas Kristof
Most of the time in the 21st century, we dominate our surroundings: We tweak the thermostat, and the temperature falls one degree. We push a button, and Taylor Swift sings for us. It’s the opposite in the wilderness, which teaches us constantly that we are not lords of the universe but rather building blocks of it. – Nicholas Kristof
Wilderness trails constitute a rare space in America marked by economic diversity. Lawyers and construction workers get bitten by the same mosquitoes and sip from the same streams; there are none of the usual signals about socioeconomic status, for most hikers are in shorts and a T-shirt and enveloped by an aroma that would make a skunk queasy. – Nicholas Kristof
Perhaps no country in Latin America is more picturesque than Bolivia, and the most memorable Bolivian city may be Potosi. – Nicholas Kristof
Our world is enriched when coders and marketers dazzle us with smartphones and tablets, but, by themselves, they are just slabs. It is the music, essays, entertainment and provocations that they access, spawned by the humanities, that animate them – and us. – Nicholas Kristof
I wouldn’t want everybody to be an art or literature major, but the world would be poorer – figuratively, anyway – if we were all coding software or running companies. We also want musicians to awaken our souls, writers to lead us into fictional lands, and philosophers to help us exercise our minds and engage the world. – Nicholas Kristof
She may hide it, but Clinton is a policy nerd. Ask about microfinance, and she’ll talk your ear off. Mention early childhood interventions, and she will gush about obscure details of a home visitation experiment in Elmira, N.Y., that dramatically improved child outcomes. – Nicholas Kristof
However imperfectly, subsidies for the poor do actually reduce hunger, ease suffering and create opportunity, while subsidies for the rich result in more private jets and yachts. Would we rather subsidize opportunity or yachts? Which kind of subsidies deserve more scrutiny? – Nicholas Kristof
One of the most crucial kinds of intervention is in advocacy. We can think about charities in the context of delivering services, and indeed that is part of their job, but advocacy is also getting governments to step up to the plate. They can also give more voice to those who don’t have one. – Nicholas Kristof
