“What people say about you, good or bad, is not nearly as important as what you are.”

“When people talk about the good old days, I say to people, 'It's not the days that are old, it's you that's old.' I hate the good old days. What is important is that today is good.”

“What you did is not nearly as important as what you are going to do.”

“The interesting thing about cities isn’t what they do when people are looking,” Ben says. “It’s what they do when they think nobody’s looking. Like, the shit the city is proud of? The shining skyscrapers downtown, the sports stadiums, the public art? You can’t judge a city by that. That only tells you what the rich people are doing on a good day. It’s what people do on a bad day—a bad day when there are no security cameras watching—that tells you what you really want to know. It’s how people act during a blackout, a hurricane, or a siege that tells you the truth about a city.”

“Good communication is less about saying what you mean, and more about defining what you say.”

“Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.”