Quotes from Rutger Bregman

My aspiration was to write a book that you could still read in 10 years. That's hard. Then you start doubting every sentence you write.

One of the basic lessons of history is that things can be different.

A world where wages no longer rise still needs consumers. Middle-class purchasing power has been maintained through loans, loans and more loans. The Calvinistic reflex that you have to work for your money has turned into a license for inequality.

No one is suggesting societies the world over should implement an expensive basic income system in one stroke.

If I say most people are pretty decent that may sound nice and warm but actually it's really radical and subversive and that's why, all throughout history, those who have advocated a more hopeful view of human nature - often the anarchists - have been persecuted.

Psychologists even have a term for this: they talk about 'mean world syndrome'. People who have just seen too much of the news have become more cynical, more pessimistic, more anxious, even more depressive. So, yeah, I think that is something you need to be wary of.

Contact is the best medicine against hate, racism and prejudice. It's something that we should be very wary of, the more segregation we have, the more of a problem that's going to be.

A Dutchman can't easily get away from cheese. I was dropped into a cauldron of cheese when I was young.

In reality, it is the waste collectors, the nurses, and the cleaners whose shoulders are supporting the apex of the pyramid. They are the true mechanism of social solidarity.

I always eat bread and almost always peanut butter and apple syrup, sometimes cheese. I hardly ever ate out as a child. When I did it more as a student, it felt strange to be served.

Around the year 2000, countries such as France, the Netherlands and the US were already five times as wealthy as in 1930. Yet nowadays our biggest challenges are not leisure and boredom, but stress and uncertainty.

Year after year, politicians have drafted huge piles of legislation on the assumption that most people are not good. And we know the consequences of that policy: inequality, loneliness and mistrust.

Poor people aren't making dumb decisions because they are dumb, but because they're living in a context in which anyone would make dumb decisions.

Poverty is not a lack of character. Poverty is a lack of cash.

The real 'Lord of the Flies' is a tale of friendship and loyalty; one that illustrates how much stronger we are if we can lean on each other.

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.

If we assume the best in people, we can radically redesign our democracy and welfare states.

From Scotland to India, and from Silicon Valley to Kenya, policymakers all over the world have become interested in basic income as an answer to poverty, unemployment and the bureaucratic behemoth of the modern welfare state.

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.

Basic income would give people the most important freedom: the freedom of deciding for themselves what they want to do with their lives.

Since long workdays lead to more errors, shorter workdays could reduce accidents. Overtime is deadly. Tired surgeons have been found to be more prone to slip'ups, and soldiers who get too little shuteye are more prone to miss targets.

New ideas rarely come from the moderate parties in The Hague or Washington, in Brussels or Westminster. The world's political centres are not the breeding ground for true change, but rather where it comes home to roost.

Even if you don't care about the environment whatsoever, solar panels are really cool, and are an investment because they save money in the long run.

One of my rules for life is: 'When in doubt, assume the best,' because in the end, most people are pretty decent.