For a birthday, or an anniversary, or a long train. The questions people answer differently at sixty than they would have at thirty — and on this site you can often read both.
For a birthday, a quiet Sunday, or the week you realise you have been answering other people's priorities. Not a goal worksheet — the questions people answer differently at fifty than at twenty-five.
26 people · 194 answers
South Africa international rugby union flanker and captain
Recorded · Red Bull · 2019
To be remembered for all the things that you do and as someone who makes people smile, touches people's lives – that is what should wake you up every single morning.
39th President of the United States, 1977–1981; Governor of Georgia 1971–1975
Recorded · The Nobel Foundation · 2002
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
Prime Minister of New Zealand, 2017–2023; Leader of the Labour Party 2017–2023
Recorded · Harvard Magazine · 2022
We are the richer for our difference, and poorer for our division.
Founder of The Vanguard Group, 1974
Recorded · Georgetown University / johncbogle.com · 2007
There's the world's work to be done, and there are never enough citizens with determined hearts, courageous character, intelligent minds, and idealistic souls to do it.
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1985–1991; President of the Soviet Union 1990–1991
Recorded · The Nobel Foundation · 1991
Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.
Secretary-General of the United Nations, 1997–2006
Recorded · The Nobel Foundation · 2001
In this new century, we must start from the understanding that peace belongs not only to states or peoples, but to each and every member of those communities.
Founder and chief executive of Bumble
Recorded · CNBC Make It · 2021
I think fear and fear of the unknown and perceived failure is what holds people back. For me, I am more scared of complacency than having something not work out.
First Lady of the United States 1933–1945; United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly 1945–1952; Chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights 1946–1951
Recorded · Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, The George Washington University · 1960
Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight.
Electrical engineer and astronaut; director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, 2013–2018
Recorded · National Women’s History Museum · 2018
It’s a very interesting and challenging field! It’s important to study math and science throughout high school and college, and major in some technical area.
U.S. Representative from Georgia, 1987–2020; Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1963–1966
Recorded · Emory News Center, Emory University · 2014
You must find a way to get in the way, you must find a way to get into trouble — good trouble, necessary trouble.
Co-founder of LinkedIn; partner at Greylock Partners
Recorded · Reid Hoffman on Medium
The challenge of a big, over-arching vision is that it's hard to know where to start. And your biggest opportunity will change from year to year. Technology changes. Competition changes.
Financier; co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1991
When I went through school, I was in a hurry. I was an economics major as an undergraduate, and I was a finance major in graduate school.
44th President of the United States, 2009–2017; United States Senator from Illinois 2005–2008
Recorded · ABC News · 2011
Security. People naturally resist change in our personal lives.
Author and marketer; founder of Yoyodyne and Squidoo
Recorded · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2020
I think authenticity is a crock, and I think authenticity is overrated and talked about far too much. The problem with authenticity is it’s selfish.
Economist and philosopher; laureate of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, 1998
Recorded · Nobel Prize Outreach · 1998
This was a co-educational school, with many progressive features.
Designer; host of Design Matters; founder of the SVA branding programme
Recorded · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2018
one of the things that I learned from doing Design Matters from my guest Danny Shapiro, and I think I mentioned this in part one of my interview with Tim; confidence is overrated.
First Lady of the United States 1933–1945; United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly 1945–1952; Chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights 1946–1951
Recorded · Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, The George Washington University · 1943
Tolerance ought only to be a preliminary step which allows us to get to know other people, and which prevents us from setting up bars, just because they may be of a different race or…
Creator of the Linux kernel and of Git
Recorded · TED (transcript of the TED2016 interview) · 2016
I've actually felt slightly uncomfortable at TED for the last two days, because there's a lot of vision going on, right? And I am not a visionary. I do not have a five-year plan.
Photojournalist and war photographer; Pulitzer Prize winner, 2009
Recorded · Academy of Achievement (achievement.org)
I think I naturally felt like I needed to pull back, and maybe that’s one of the reasons why I decided to get pregnant then because I was 37, and I had Lukas at 38.
Novelist and short-story writer
Recorded · The Guardian · 2010
Don’t read your reviews. […] Don’t write reviews. (Your judgment’s always tainted.) […] Don’t write letters to the editor. (No one cares.)
Veterinary surgeon and immunologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1996
Recorded · Nobel Prize Outreach · 1996
On returning to Brisbane, I realised fairly quickly that I am an experimentalist at heart. A career as a diagnostic virologist was not for me!
Novelist and essayist
Recorded · Wellesley College · 2015
To get this prize, I was required to talk about how important a particular European feminist woman writer had been to me.
Co-founder of Viaweb and of the startup accelerator Y Combinator; essayist
Recorded · paulgraham.com · 2016
When I ask myself what I've found life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is “bullshit.” I realize that answer is somewhat tautological.
United States artistic gymnast
Recorded · Rev · 2021
I just felt like it would be a little bit better to take a back seat, work on my mindfulness.
Film critic
Recorded · Roger Ebert's Journal, rogerebert.com · 2010
Thank God I found sobriety. I could sustain myself with my work, my reading, the movies, my friends. And walking, walking, walking.
Neurobiologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1986
Recorded · Nobel Prize Outreach · 1986
The two alternatives left then to us were either to emigrate to the United States, or to pursue some activity that needed neither support nor connection with the outside Aryan world where…
Poet and essayist
Recorded · Text Publishing · 2017
Downstairs, the boys gaze at a screen on the old futon in the playroom. We will figure out what to do about them soon enough.
Pharmaceutical chemist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 2015
Recorded · Nobel Prize Outreach · 2015
I unfortunately contracted tuberculosis at the age of sixteen and had to take a two-year break and receive treatment at home before I resumed my study at the private Ningbo Xiaoshi High…
British Formula One driver
Recorded · Sky Sports · 2023
For me, school was probably the most traumatising and most difficult part of my life. I already was being bullied at the age of six.
Jazz tenor saxophonist and composer
Recorded · Academy of Achievement (achievement.org)
I went through some really terrible times. I don’t know whether I should really even mention it, but you mentioned that I had to go to prison and all that stuff.
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1988–2018
Recorded · American Academy of Achievement · 2005
I think fiction is very important because it gets us into the mind of a person. Hamlet is a tremendous piece of literature. You know Hamlet better than you know most real people.
Comedian and writer; co-creator of 2 Broke Girls
Recorded · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2018
I believe that I had something called epigenetic imprinting, which I actually read about in a book called The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine.
Anti-apartheid lawyer; Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa
Recorded · American Academy of Achievement · 2009
I’d been introduced to Freud through all this because I couldn’t understand why is it so difficult to be brave.
Writer and human rights advocate; Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 1986
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1996
I remember the awakening that occurred in me when I read, for the first time, Franz Kafka. ... That morning I was happy.
Rock climber; first person to free solo El Capitan
Recorded · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2018
some of the most noteworthy books I’ve read I guess, like A People’s History of the US, the Howard Zinn book totally changed the way I look at politics.
Neurologist and writer
Recorded · American Academy of Achievement · 2000
The first biography I read — I think the first scientific biography — was Madame Curie . And my mother, who was a surgeon, worked at the Marie Curie Hospital.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Charlie Munger, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, David Vélez, Derek Sivers, Desmond Tutu, Edmund Hillary, George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, John Lewis, Malala Yousafzai, Marina Abramović, Mario Molina, Mellody Hobson, Mohamed ElBaradei, Oliver Sacks, Richard Feynman, Serena Williams, Shinya Yamanaka, Simone Biles, Steve Jobs, Tony Judt, Warren Buffett, Winston Churchill