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Demis Hassabis

Co-founder and chief executive of Google DeepMind; Nobel laureate in Chemistry

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
I think chess — actually, a number of things that I learned when I was young — it wasn't so much the chess itself; it was the skills that you were training while you were playing chess. So problem-solving, imagination, creative thinking, strategic thinking, all of these things — if you play chess to a high level, what you're really honing is those meta-skills. And I realized from quite young, that's one of the reasons I liked chess was this is a great practice for me to get good — sort of like a mental gym, if you like — to get really good at those other skills, which you could then translate to all sorts of other subjects like science or business.

Academy of Achievement interview, 2017 source ↗

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Anne Enright Novelist and short-story writer
Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not ­counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.
Recorded The Guardian Review, 20 February 2010 source ↗
Richard Feynman Theoretical physicist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 1965
So I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy solution for me where I don’t have to teach.  Never.
Recorded Excerpt from “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”, Engineering and Science / Caltech Magazine, 1985 source ↗
Óscar Arias Sánchez President of Costa Rica, 1986–1990 and 2006–2010
My country is a country of teachers. It is therefore a country of peace. We discuss our successes and failures in complete freedom. Because our country is a country of teachers, we closed the army camps, and our children go with books under their arms, not with rifles on their shoulders. We believe in dialogue, in agreement, in reaching a consensus. We reject violence. Because my country is a country of teachers, we believe in convincing our opponents, not defeating them. We prefer raising the fallen to crushing them, because we believe that no one possesses the absolute truth.
Recorded Oslo City Hall, The Nobel Foundation, 11 December 1987 source ↗
Malala Yousafzai Education campaigner; co-founder of the Malala Fund; United Nations Messenger of Peace
Her story is why I dedicate the Nobel Peace Prize money to the Malala Fund, to help give girls quality education, everywhere, anywhere in the world and to raise their voices. The first place this funding will go to is where my heart is, to build schools in Pakistan—especially in my home of Swat and Shangla.
Recorded Oslo City Hall, The Nobel Foundation, 10 December 2014 source ↗

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