180 Quotes by Rutger Bregman

Children are born as emphatic and compassionate beings - so you don't have to teach them generosity, it's in their nature to be friendly.

There is certainly a longstanding idea within western culture that civilization is only a thin veneer. As soon as something happens, say a war or a natural disaster or an epidemic like we're going through right now, the worst comes out in each of us.

But I think 'Love, Actually' has a very realistic view of human nature in line with the latest scientific evidence. The opening scene, where Hugh Grant's character talks about the arrivals gate at Heathrow, is about friendship and connection, it's about who we really are as a species.

Maybe utopianism is my form of religion in a world without God.

What the underdog socialist has forgotten is that the story of the left ought to be a narrative of hope and progress.

History will tell you that borders are not inevitable, they hardly existed at the end of the 19th century.

Since 1963, the University of Delaware's Disaster Research Center has conducted nearly 700 field studies on floods and earthquakes, and on-site research reveals the same results every time: the vast majority of people stay calm and help each other.

It's important to make a distinction between the news and journalism. The news is about recent, incidental and sensational events. It's mostly about exceptions.

I was born in 1988, one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and people of my generation were taught that utopian dreams are dangerous.