Hans Rosling Quotes

The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles.

I believe the ability to think is blessed. If you can think about a situation, you can deal with it. The big struggle is to keep your head clear enough to think.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

Think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought.

It's actually very surprising how little we think about the quality of our decision-making and how we could improve it. How absent decision-making classes are from educational curricula. How little we think about how it is we think.

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

I'm generally slow to anger, quick to forgive, and I take in information before making decisions. So no matter how controversial the decision, my general demeanour is to put on white lab coat and gloves and look at the evidence, weigh the arguments and see what makes sense.

Mostly, I try to take a rational approach to life.

Once you start looking at the world rationally, it becomes much more exciting.

To be intellectual does not require one to be alienated and oppositional.

I am a linear thinker in a lot of ways.

No one wants to follow a pessimist... You can be skeptical, you can be realistic, but you can't be cynical. If your boss is Eeyore, do you want to work with someone like that? Oh, bother.

It's not wrong to be skeptical. I was one who participated in the debate on Iraq and voted against the resolution because I was skeptical of the intelligence. But that was based on looking at the facts, analyzing the case in as rational and as logical way as you can, not simply concluding or dismissing facts.

If you can get rid of the emotion and concentrate on the problem, you can solve the problem.

I have always tended to over-think things and that had come into my game. That's good in certain moments but not when you have to make a quick decision.

I would say that many architects are very logical. They start their process from analysis and from rational processes to try and find the 'right' answer, like solving a mathematic equation.

I don't think I'm always right, but I would like to empower people to come to sound conclusions using a systematic way of looking at things.

Intelligence is an extremely subtle concept. It's a kind of understanding that flourishes if it's combined with a good memory, but exists anyway even in the absence of good memory. It's the ability to draw consequences from causes, to make correct inferences, to foresee what might be the result, to work out logical problems, to be reasonable, rational, to have the ability to understand the solution from perhaps insufficient information. You know when a person is intelligent, but you can be easily fooled if you are not yourself intelligent.

Beginning to reason is like stepping onto an escalator that leads upward and out of sight. Once we take the first step, the distance to be traveled is independent of our will and we cannot know in advance where we shall end.

It's got to be the best intellectual exercise out there. You're seeing through new situations every ten minutes. In the stock market you don't base your decisions on what the market is doing, but on what you think is rational. Bridge is about weighing gain/loss ratios. You're doing calculations all the time.

Get the heat and emotion out worry, and put cold, ruthless scrutiny onto the problem, and worry loses its power. When we are worried and filled with apprehension, we become panicky and are likely to see only gloom and failure. There isn't any situation so bad that it won't become a lot better when you think rationally - and spiritually - about it. God gives you the ability to think rationally about things by filling you with peace and faith.

The more complex the world situation becomes, the more scientific and rational analysis you have to have, the less you can do with simple good will and sentiment.

Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

I’m not against thinking; I’m only against thinking that thinking on its own will get you out of a hole. Shovel also needed.

Learn to use your brain power. Critical thinking is the key to creative problem solving in business.