Top 100 Hans Rosling Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “When someone threatens you with a machete, never turn your back. Stand still. Look him straight in the eye and ask him what the problem is.”

— Hans Rosling

52. “Remember: things can be bad, and getting better.”

— Hans Rosling

53. “To control the negativity instinct, expect bad news.”

— Hans Rosling

54. “We like to believe that things happen because someone wanted them to, that individuals have power and agency: otherwise, the world feels unpredictable, confusing, and frightening.”

— Hans Rosling

55. “In fact, resist blaming any one individual or group of individuals for anything. Because the problem is that when we identify the bad guy, we are done thinking. And it’s almost always more complicated than that. It’s almost always about multiple interacting causes – a system. If you really want to change the world, you have to understand how it actually works and forget about punching anyone in the face.”

— Hans Rosling

56. “The five that concern me most are the risks of global pandemic, financial collapse, world war, climate change, and extreme poverty.”

— Hans Rosling

57. “What you are about to read was not invented according to the “lone genius” stereotype. It is instead the result of constant discussion, argument, and collaboration between three people with different talents, knowledge, and perspectives. This unconventional, often infuriating, but deeply productive way of working has led to a way of presenting the world and how to think about it, that I never could have created on my own.”

— Hans Rosling

58. “Eighteen fifty-eight was a year of great technological advancement in the West. That was the year when Queen Victoria was able, for the first time, to communicate with President Buchanan, through the Transatlantic Telegraphic Cable. And they were the first to ‘Twitter’ transatlantically.”

— Hans Rosling

59. “Being intelligent – being good with numbers, or being well educated, or even winning a Nobel Prize – is not a shortcut to global factual knowledge. Experts are experts only within their field.”

— Hans Rosling

60. “Cultures, nations, religions, and people are not rocks. They are in constant transformation.”

— Hans Rosling

61. “I’m a very serious “possibilist.” That’s something I made up. It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic worldview.”

— Hans Rosling

62. “Data was absolutely key. And because it will be key in the future too, when there is another outbreak somewhere, it is crucial to protect its credibility and the credibility of those who produce it. Data must be used to tell the truth, not to call to action, no matter how noble the intentions.”

— Hans Rosling

63. “Experts are experts only within their field.”

— Hans Rosling

64. “Something frightening poses a perceived risk. Something dangerous poses a real risk.”

— Hans Rosling

65. “Claim” comes just as easily as “blame.”

— Hans Rosling

66. “The next generation is like the last runner in a very long relay race. The race to end extreme poverty has been a marathon, with the starter gun fired in 1800. This next generation has the unique opportunity to complete the job: to pick up the baton, cross the line, and raise its hands in triumph. The project must be completed. And we should have a big party when we are done.”

— Hans Rosling

67. “It is quite relaxing being humble, because it means you can stop feeling pressured to have a view about everything, and stop feeling you must be ready to defend your views all the time.”

— Hans Rosling

68. “To understand a phenomenon, we need to make sure we understand the shape of its curve. By assuming we know how a curve continues beyond what we see, we will draw the wrong conclusions and come up with the wrong solutions.”

— Hans Rosling

69. “When someone says that a majority of a group has some property it can sound like most of them have something in common. Remember that majority just means more than half. It could mean 51 percent. It could mean 99 percent. If possible, ask for the percentage.”

— Hans Rosling

70. “In a devastating example of critical thinking gone bad, highly educated, deeply caring parents avoid the vaccinations that would protect their children from killer diseases. I love critical thinking and I admire skepticism, but only within a framework that respects the evidence.”

— Hans Rosling

71. “You need the generalization instinct to live your everyday life, and occasionally it can save you from having to eat something disgusting. We always need categories. The challenge is to realize which of our simple categories are misleading – like “developed” and “developing” countries – and replace them with better categories, like the four levels.”

— Hans Rosling

72. “Paying too much attention to the individual visible victim rather than to the numbers can lead us to spend all our resources on a fraction of the problem, and therefore save many fewer lives.”

— Hans Rosling

73. “The misconception that the world is getting worse is very difficult to maintain when we put the present in its historical context. We shouldn’t diminish the tragedies of the droughts and famines happening right now. But knowledge of the tragedies of the past should help everyone realize how the world has become both much more transparent and much better at getting help to where it’s needed.”

— Hans Rosling

74. “Paying too much attention to what is frightening rather than what is dangerous – that is, paying too much attention to fear – creates a tragic drainage of energy in the wrong direction.”

— Hans Rosling

75. “For example, in the United States, the violent-crime rate has been on a downward trend since 1990. Just under 14.5 million crimes were reported in 1990. By 2016 that figure was well under 9.5 million. Each time something horrific or shocking happened, which was pretty much every year, a crisis was reported. The majority of people, the vast majority of the time, believe that violent crime is getting worse. No wonder we get an illusion of constant deterioration.”

— Hans Rosling

76. “When I see a lonely number in a news report, it always triggers an alarm: What should this lonely number be compared to? What was that number a year ago? Ten years ago? What is it in a comparable country or region? And what should it be divided by? What is the total of which this is a part? What would this be per person? I compare the rates, and only then do I decide whether it really is an important number.”

— Hans Rosling

77. “We have many instincts that used to be useful thousands of years ago, but we live in a very different world now.”

— Hans Rosling

78. “During the Second World War and the Korean War, doctors and nurses discovered that unconscious soldiers stretchered off the battlefields survived more often if they were laid on their fronts rather than on their backs. On their backs, they often suffocated on their own vomit. On their fronts, the vomit could exit and their airways remained open. This observation saved many millions of lives, not just of soldiers.”

— Hans Rosling

79. “The only proven method for curbing population growth is to eradicate extreme poverty.”

— Hans Rosling

80. “Delaying the escape from extreme poverty just increases the population.”

— Hans Rosling

81. “The macho values that are found today in many Asian and African countries, these are not Asian values, or African values. They are not Muslim values. They are not Eastern values. They are patriarchal values like those found in Sweden only 60 years ago, and with social and economic progress they will vanish, just as they did in Sweden. They are not unchangeable.”

— Hans Rosling

82. “It would not be the last time I had to ask myself: which changes are most important? And which changes are easy to make?”

— Hans Rosling

83. “Under the current US system, rich, insured patients visit doctors more than they need, running up costs, while poor patients cannot afford even simple, inexpensive treatments and die younger than they should.”

— Hans Rosling

84. “Knowing that most people are deluded means you don’t need to be embarrassed. Instead you can be curious:.”

— Hans Rosling

85. “The most important thing you can do to avoid misjudging the importance of something is to avoid isolated figures. Never, ever, leave a figure alone. Never believe that a figure can be significant on its own. If you are presented with a figure, always ask At least one more. Something to compare it to. Be especially careful with large figures. Funny, but figures that exceed a certain size, if not compared to something, always seem large. And how can you not be important something big?”

— Hans Rosling

86. “The world seems scarier than it is because what you hear about it has been selected – by your own attention filter or by the media.”

— Hans Rosling

87. “The general trend toward less violence is not just one more improvement. It is the most beautiful trend there is. The spread of peace over the last decades has enabled all the other improvements we have seen. We must take care of this fragile gift if we hope to achieve our other noble goals, such as collaboration toward a sustainable future. Without world peace, you can forget about all other global progress.”

— Hans Rosling

88. “There is, though, a strong link between income and number of babies per woman.”

— Hans Rosling

89. “How many people in the West would guess that women in Iran today decide to have fewer babies than women in either the United States or Sweden?”

— Hans Rosling

90. “Every group of people I ask thinks the world is more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless – in short, more dramatic – than it really is.”

— Hans Rosling

91. “Many of us forget to behave properly with those who will control the future trade deals.”

— Hans Rosling

92. “Being always in favor of or always against any particular idea makes you blind to information that doesn’t fit your perspective. This is usually a bad approach if you like to understand reality.”

— Hans Rosling

93. “It is, at least, clear that a free media is no guarantee that the world’s fastest cultural changes will be reported.”

— Hans Rosling

94. “In 2016 a total of 40 million commercial passenger flights landed safely at their destinations. Only ten ended in fatal accidents. Of course, those were the ones the journalists wrote about: 0.000025 percent of the total. Safe flights are not newsworthy.”

— Hans Rosling

95. “We have an instinct to find someone to blame, but we rarely look in the mirror. I think smart and kind people often fail to reach the terrible, guilt-inducing conclusion that our own immigration policies are responsible for the drownings of refugees.”

— Hans Rosling

96. “I see no conflict between celebrating this progress and continuing to fight for more.”

— Hans Rosling

97. “Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields.”

— Hans Rosling

98. “On top of two large green leaves lay two whole, skinned, grilled rats.”

— Hans Rosling

99. “If this means you don’t have time to form so many opinions, so what? Wouldn’t you rather have few opinions that are right than many that are wrong?”

— Hans Rosling

100. “What the photos make clear is that the main factor that affects how people live is not their religion, their culture, or the country they live in, but their income.”

— Hans Rosling