Johann Hari Quotes

#1. The past would always be part of the present, but at least that was true for both sides: the good and the bad.

Aleksandr Voinov

#2. I got my dad a great father's Day present. He called to say: 'Ach. Zis present is so good I now think it vas almost vorth having children.

Johann Hari

#3. Leaning forward, Cinder spoke very clearly. "I have a computer in my brain," she said. "So while I'm not going to tell you that I am the smartest or, by any means, the most experienced person in this room, I would suggest that no one use my youth to believe that I am also ignorant.

Marissa Meyer

#4. You pass a program and get people dependent on it, making it brutal to get rid of. The key is not letting it get started.

Charles Koch

#5. The United States now imprisons more people16 for drug offenses than Western European nations imprison for all crimes combined. No human society has ever before imprisoned this high a proportion of its population.

Johann Hari

#6. There is an emerging scientific consensus that global warming is making hurricanes more intense and more destructive. It turns out that Katrina fits into a pattern that scientists and greens have been trying to warn us about for a long time.

Johann Hari

#7. For each traumatic event that happened to a child, they were two to four times more likely to grow up to be an addicted adult.

Johann Hari

#8. For anybody who suspects that we need to reform the drug laws, there is an easier argument to make, and a harder argument to make. The easier argument is to say that we all agree drugs are bad - it's just that drug prohibition is even worse.

Johann Hari

#9. The bombs held in current nuclear arsenals are seventy times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. If we don't begin opposing the drift towards more and more of them, we will live in the shadow of the mushroom cloud for the rest of our lives - and millions may die there.

Johann Hari

#10. The world belongs to the strong,"12 Harry believed. "It always has and it always will.

Johann Hari

#11. I like to drive with my knees. Otherwise, how can I put on my lipstick and talk on the phone?

Sharon Stone

#12. When Billie Holiday came15 to London in the 1950s, she was amazed. They "are civilized about it and they have no narcotics problem at all," she explained. "One day America is going to smarten up and do the

Johann Hari

#13. The American head of state grew up with a mother on food stamps. The British head of state grew up with a mother on postage stamps. Is that a contrast that fills you with pride?

Johann Hari

#14. Punishment - shaming a person, caging them, making them unemployable - traps them in addiction. Taking that money and spending it instead on helping them to get jobs and homes and decent lives makes it possible for many of them to stop.

Johann Hari

#15. Your working assumption, when you meet a homophobe, should be that they are gay.

Johann Hari

#16. Naughtiness is a diamond of childhood.

Aabid Surti

#17. I'm so patriotic, I think every British kid should have a chance to grow up to be our head of state.

Johann Hari

#18. All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do.

Johann Hari

#19. The greatest trick the rich - and their cheerleaders on the right - ever pulled was convincing the world that class didn't exist. Out here in the real world, it is more real and more rigid than it has been for a century.

Johann Hari

#20. Until the day that "the Great Judge proclaims: / 'The last addict's died,'254 " the poem said, "Then - not till then - may you be retired.

Johann Hari

#21. The US head of state grew up on food stamps. The British head of state grew up on the postage stamps.

Johann Hari

#22. It took me a while to see that the contrast between the racism directed at Billie and the compassion offered to addicted white stars like Judy Garland was not some weird misfiring of the drug war - it was part of the point.

Johann Hari

#23. A theme of digital success is keeping it simple.

Walter Isaacson

#24. It would be as if the Navy Seals defected from the U.S. Army to help the Crips take over Los Angeles
and succeeded.

Johann Hari

#25. The truth emerging from this scattered picture of nuclear proliferation is simple: there is a stronger chance of a nuclear bomb being used now than at almost any point in the Cold War.

Johann Hari

#26. The war on drugs makes it almost impossible for drug users to get milder forms of their drug - and it pushes them inexorably toward harder drugs.

Johann Hari

#27. I respect you as a person too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs.

Johann Hari

#28. The opposite of addiction isn't sobriety. It's connection.

Johann Hari

#29. As a husband and as a father of girls, I cannot imagine any woman in my family making the sacrifice of sanity required to run for office. The limited reward for public service cannot blunt the cost.

Mark McKinnon

#30. The climate-change deniers are rapidly ending up with as much intellectual credibility as creationists and Flat Earthers ... they are nudging close to having the moral credibility of Holocaust deniers.

Johann Hari

#31. Something has gone badly wrong with our culture. We've created a culture where really large numbers of the people around us can't bear to be present in their daily lives. They need to medicate themselves to get through their day.

Johann Hari

#32. Real communication is an attitude, an environment. It is the most interactive of all processes. It requires countless hours of eyeball to eyeball, back and forth. It involves more listening than talking.

Jack Welch

#33. Wouldn't it be better to spend our money on rescuing kids before they become addicts than on jailing them after we have failed?

Johann Hari

#34. It is a natural human instinct to turn our fears into symbols, and destroy the symbols, in the hope that it will destroy the fear. It is a logic that keeps recurring throughout human history, from the Crusades to the witch hunts to the present day.

Johann Hari

#35. So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.

Johann Hari