Jeffrey Skoll Quotes

We live in such a sheltered environment in the United States. I've been fortunate enough to have traveled all over the world, and I've seen things you only read about and see on the news.

After a lifetime of world travel I've been fascinated that those in the third world don't have the same perception of reality that we do.

When I go to Bali, when I come to India and travel and see different cultures. I make sure I'm involved in the world out there, creatively, culturally.

You leave the States, and you see people have bigger problems than you, much worse problems than you.

Going to Liberia really changed a lot for me. I didn't realize what was happening on the same planet. My understanding that in the world everything is interconnected really grew - to go to one of the poorest countries from one of the richest countries in the world. It was two worlds apart.

In college, I was a researcher/writer for 'Let's Go: Europe,' assigned to Crete and Cyprus. I was supposed to go to England, but at the last minute they transferred me, despite the fact that I spoke not a word of Greek. I learned the very basics, and to this day can say 'oil,' 'vinegar,' and 'boyfriend in America.'

I would love to travel around the world working for a travel company taking students abroad on cultural immersion trips.

I think growing up in South Africa, and then moving to Canada, I'm just genuinely interested in the difference between the First World and the Third World, immigration, and how the new, globalized world is beginning to operate. All of those things run through my mind a lot.

When I was 17, I went to India for six weeks and had what, at the time, was a very challenging trip. You walk down the street and you see lepers and beggars, and there were several of us, a group of Americans. I remember we were just trying to park one night somewhere and people were just sleeping in the parking lot.

When you go out of your country and meet people, you get a wider perspective.

I'd never really travelled before, and when we started going places, like Japan, France, Germany and all over Europe, it's been interesting to see how different cultures work. But to be there playing music makes it so much better.

Angie visited Ethiopia and it changed her life. It's hard for her to go home to a very expensive restaurant and order freely.

One of the things that struck me when I came to the U.S. was discovering American poverty.

We Americans look funny when we're in France because we don't travel, we are fairly un-cultured whereas Europeans go to Africa all the time because it's right there.

I had really not been out of the United States much, except for Mexico. I thought, "Jesus Christ, this [Russia] is like a whole new world." Instead of writing Michael Jackson one-glove jokes, all I had to do was go to these weird places and keep my eyes and ears open.

Distribution of the wealth of the world is something for which no one sees a practical solution

Income inequality is the central problem all the way across the world.

I want to explore the world properly, to be able to write about and take pictures of all kinds of different cultures. Just be an explorer or adventurer. I also love extreme sports.

I never thought I'd have the opportunity to visit another culture.

When the World Economic Forum was established in 1971, the global population was four billion, of which 50% lived in poverty.

I'm very comfortable in the U.S. and Europe, but I feel completely out of place in the rest of the world, mostly because I never spent time outside the U.S. and Europe until I was in my 30s.

Individual nations have offered their own contributions to income inequality - financial deregulation and upper-bracket tax cuts in the United States; insider privatization in Russia; rent-seeking in regulated industries in India and Mexico.

My dad was a journalist. One great trip we took was to Israel. We went there and drove through the whole country, and it was pretty incredible. We went to the Philippines and saw the beauty of that country but also what poverty really looks like. That had a profound effect on me.

It's almost impossible to have security at the expense of insecurity of others. It's almost impossible to have prosperity when there is a huge problem of poverty and backwardness all over the world.

It's amazing how often campaigners in rich countries think poor people don't get backache.