Journalist Claire Shipman discusses the role authenticity plays in the manifestation and expression of confidence. Shipman is co-author of the 2014 book The Confidence Code.

Biologist Edward O. Wilson speaks to the impact of synthetic biology and other advances that will reframe how human beings perceive life.

"Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn, and laughter..."

"People are afraid, and when people are afraid, when their pie is shrinking, they look for somebody to hate. They look for somebody to blame. And a real leader speaks to anxiety and to fear and allays those fears, assuages anxiety."

"Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it."

The United States has a long history of using force to defend the property and interests of its citizens. MIT Research Fellow Michael Schrage asks why responses to cyberattacks deviate from that precedent.

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone."

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." 

The author of The Internet is Not the Answer decries the free business model that has brought so much success to companies like Google and Facebook.

One of the field's most acclaimed psychiatrists explains the dangers of neglecting the severity of intense traumatic experiences. 

"An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field."

"I don't say I was 'proceeding down a thoroughfare.' I say I 'walked down the road.' I don't say I 'passed a hallowed institute of learning.' I say I 'passed a school.' You don't wear all your jewellery at once. You're much more believable if you talk in your own voice."

"Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is."

Kip Tindell, featured today on the Big Think homepage, is CEO of the Container Store. He's also an evangelist for integrity-based sales and brand-building through sales rather than marketing.

"It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams."  

Life coach and author Tony Robbins had entered the world of personal finance with his latest book.

"Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise."

The noted Mexican painter wrote in her diary of the solidarity she feels with others like her who feel like "the strangest person in the world."

"There is more than one kind of wisdom, and all are essential in the world; it is not bad that they should alternate."

An expectant mother's enhanced exposure to Vitamin D via summer rays likely explains new research that indicates children born in October and November have a step up athletically.