What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong?
Recorded
Daron Acemoglu
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said elsewhere, not written here
It is simplistic in the following sense that you cannot institute democracy from above. It’s a very difficult process. And democracy is not the only dimension of institutions that matters. Although my work does emphasise that democracy by itself matters as well. But the problem is really alive today in the industrialised world, where you would think, and many political scientists have claimed that democracy is safe and secure and would never be under threat. It is under threat. Support for democracy is at an all time low, not just in the US, although really jarringly in the US but not just in the US, throughout the western world. So democracy is not easy to make work because democracy is about democratic citizenship. It’s about consensus, it’s about communication. It’s about accepting defeat, making compromises, talking and understanding the other side. All of those things are always difficult. They become more difficult during times of turbulence, which, you know, we are living through and they become harder when the infrastructure, for example, the communication infrastructure, makes this sort of democratic citizenship harder, which I think is not the only factor. But social media has certainly played that role.
Adam Smith, Telephone interview recorded shortly after the prize announcement, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 October 2026
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I never got to the point where I felt that nonviolence was not viable. ... I realized that it wasn’t that it wouldn’t work, it’s that people didn’t follow the proper steps in trying to achieve it because there are a set of principles and there are a set of steps in the methodology that we were taught about nonviolence. And when we follow those they work.
Recorded
Academy of Achievement interview, 12 June 2004
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I continued the work on dorsal, discovered the recessive phenotype and interpreted the phenotype postulating a gradient determining the dorsoventral axis. At that time, gradients were not widely accepted as mechanisms, in particular biochemists were highly sceptical, however the Tübingen influence made such models attractive to me.
Recorded
Laureate-written autobiography for Les Prix Nobel, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 December 1995
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I always say the Nubank story was very unlikely. It was a very low probability event. Again. We were going after these very big incumbent banks. Everybody told me, you know, you're Colombian. You have no idea what you're doing in Brazil. They're going to crush you. Like, don't. Just don't do it. And I did it mostly because everybody told me I couldn't do it. And so, if somebody tells me I can't do something, I want to go do it.
Recorded
John Waldron, Goldman Sachs Talks, Goldman Sachs (official event transcript)
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Ronald Reagan
40th President of the United States, 1981–1989; Governor of California 1967–1975
And in all of that time I won a nickname, ``The Great Communicator.'' But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: it was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation -- from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries.
Recorded
Oval Office, The White House, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, 11 January 1989
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Question
What are you most proud of?
Identity & self
I’m proud of all my heritages, and I’m delighted that I have been able to learn from many different experiences.
Recorded
Adam Smith, Telephone interview following the announcement of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, The Nobel Prize, October 2024
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