Aspen Institute president and CEO Walter Isaacson and The Atlantic magazine owner David Bradley welcomed participants and speakers to the third annual Aspen Ideas Fest in the Greenwald Pavilion on a very hot Monday evening in Aspen. The two hosts of the festival made opening comments, followed by various well-known speakers taking to the podium to share with the audience what they deemed to be “a big idea.”
The following are some of what was heard at the Opening and Welcome of the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival:
Walter Isaacson, pres./CEO, The Aspen Institute
“We’re here to celebrate ideas. Ideas are simply when imagination and creativity meet knowledge.”
David G. Bradley, chairman and owner, The Atlantic
“Walter Isaacson is unequaled in the United States. He is the P.T. Barnum of the American intellectual class.”
Randy J. Hinrichs, founder/CEO, 2b3d
“I am formally from Microsoft research. I’ve been waiting to say this for a long time. I love Apple. I love Sony.”
Jessye Norman, opera singer
“What indeed is the big idea? I can not claim this idea as my own but it is surely about which I am passionate and pleased to speak at every opportunity and that is the necessity of the arts in our lives--the need for the arts in the education of our children, from the written word to the most ephemeral dance step. From the most permanent of carvings in stones to a canvas so covered in ideas that it simply takes the breath away…Art makes each of us whole by insisting we use all of our senses, our heads, and our hearts--that we express with our voices, our hands, our bodies, as well as with our minds.”
Anna Deavere Smith, actress/playwright
“I’ve been studying big personalities this year. And one of them is Governor Ann Richards--who as you know was on the board here--the late Ann Richards, who died of esophageal cancer in September of last year. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about her.”
Peter Gleick, cofounder and president, Pacific Institute
“I am going to throw out the idea that less may be better. Let me tell you what I mean by that. One of the challenges with water is that people are trained to think more is better. In the water world, the dilemma is that there is a fixed amount of water on the planet. The idea that more is better ultimately runs into a contradiction. There isn’t forever more water. Part of what I spend lot of my time thinking about is how to we live within fixed limits. Maybe more isn’t always better. Maybe less is better.”
Reza Aslan, writer/scholar of religions
“Political power has the ability to moderate extremist tendencies.”
Calvin O. Butts, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City/ president, State University of New York College
“The war on drugs is a dismal and absolute failure.”
Fred Kent, founder/president, Project for Public Spaces.
“My big idea is let’s get back to common sense.”
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