Eric Schmidt

I think the one that has had the biggest impact on me and the one that I’ve given the most number of people has been [The Better Angels of Our Nature] . And [The Better Angels of Our Nature] is a 700-page book on death. And it’s written by a brilliant Harvard professor who talks at great length about death rates and the human condition. And he spends a lot of time talking about what happened 200, 300, 400, 500 years ago. And when you finish the book, which takes a long time, you conclude that the world is in a much, much better place than it has been in the past, that a thousand years ago, the average man died in a war and the average woman died in pregnancy in their 20s, and that a child born today has a very high likelihood in almost all parts of the world to live to a natural old age. That’s an extraordinary statement. And that’s why the people who run around saying, “Oh, the world’s falling apart. We’ve never had it this bad.” That’s just not true. And the data says it’s not true.