Infectious Generosity Quotes

Among the many lessons of Covid-19, one of the most profound is this: You don’t need to be big to be powerful. You just need to be infectious.

Am I a net giver or a net taker? Here’s what I propose: Once a year, perhaps as part of our New Year’s resolutions, or over a coffee during an annual vacation, or on GivingTuesday in late November, we each commit to spending an hour taking stock of our lives in pursuit of our own answer to this fundamental question.

For most of history, gifts usually involved the transfer of atoms and molecules from one human to another. Food. Flowers. Tools. Clothes. Collectible objects. But the past decades have seen a giant shift. More and more value in the world today comes not from the tangible but the intangible. Not atoms but bits. Not physical stuff but the unique creations of human minds.

What’s clear is that we’re in a transition period, and my advice to creators, professional and otherwise, would be: Don’t fight it, try to get ahead of it. That is to say, try embracing generosity as part of your distribution strategy.

Whenever possible, give someone the benefit of the doubt. That itself is a meaningful act of generosity. A world in which everyone takes a cynical view of others’ motivations quickly turns dark.

often discomfort is a proxy for progress.

The idea that generosity is all about pure intent is part of a long line of religious and philosophical thinking. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant taught that an act had moral worth only if it was performed out of a sense of duty. If you got any other benefit from it, then it was a form of selfishness.

If we let go of our instinct to view generosity through a perfection filter, we could find a healthier, more productive dialogue. We could give one another, rich and poor, the benefit of the doubt and see if we can work on this together. Our goal isn’t to exhibit perfect virtue. It’s to try to make things better. And that will happen one step at a time, with all of us acknowledging one another’s efforts, and encouraging each other to find even better ways to give.

So let’s put those three things together. Nonmaterial things are playing an ever more important role in our lives. It’s easily possible to give them away on an unlimited scale. Everyone is watching, which means that giving offers unlimited impact on the biggest currency of our age: reputation.

As a philosophy student, I spent hours agonizing over this point. In a nutshell: How could I ever be a good person if being good felt good? That would mean that being good was in some sense being selfish, which was a contradiction. But if being good didn’t bring some kind of satisfaction with it, how would I ever find the motivation to be good? How would anyone? With all due apologies to Kant, I think it’s time to let go of this confusing restriction. It’s okay for people to have multiple reasons or good feelings behind their acts of giving. This sets us free to focus more on the effectiveness of giving than the nuances of the motivation behind it. If the giving results in lives being saved or improved, I don’t mind that the giver also gets joy out of it.

But actually the world isn’t infinite. And neither are its problems. Huge, yes. Infinite, no. There is, of course, no absolute way to calculate what it would cost to solve all the problems that generosity could solve. But nonetheless some remarkable work has been done to give a sense of what might be possible and what it would cost.

So when you put all these pieces together, something genuinely exciting emerges. It becomes clear that the two ancient traditions of giving—tithing and zakat—could provide the basis for all the philanthropy the world needs. Spent wisely, this would be more than enough to create the leverage required for a world in which everyone can lead a dignified life, with their basic material needs met. It could also dramatically reduce the risk of existential events threatening our world and open the door to countless other possibilities of scientific and artistic discovery.

Am I practicing a generosity mindset? This, of course, is the key to all other forms of generosity. Whether you’re heading out onto the street, or onto the Internet, it makes all the difference if you’re carrying generosity with you, looking for the best in others and for opportunities to make someone else’s day.

I have found myself asking a recurring question: What is the most generous version of everything I do?

Am I looking for every opportunity for my generosity—and that of others—to become infectious? This may be the most important question of all. This book is devoted to the idea that we can collectively build a hopeful future if we give generosity its best shot. That means taking every opportunity to notice it and celebrate it, wherever we see it.

Every human has the potential to give. The urge to do this is built deep inside each of us, and can be stirred just by our being open to the needs of others. When we share our time, our money, or our creativity, those acts can spark responses in kind. So, once it gets started, generosity can spread like wildfire. As it passes from one person to the next, many lives can be touched. And our collective witnessing of what humans are capable of can overcome today’s prevailing cynicism, bringing people together in common cause.

Everyone can play a part here. You don’t have to be rich or a creative genius. If you can adopt a generous mindset, seek to understand people you disagree with, and write words that are kind instead of cruel, you can help turn the tide. There’s no single pathway to a generous life. But everyone can aspire to give more than they take.

Generosity starts with gratitude. When we pause for a moment, we can remember countless things we can be grateful for. If we make that a beautiful daily habit, it leads naturally to a desire to give back to the universe, to build generosity into our daily lives. This could be as simple as committing to one simple act of kindness every single day or devoting time to a cause we care about by volunteering, mentoring, or engaging in online advocacy.

This is a moment to reimagine how generosity could transform us. It’s a chance to dream about audacious philanthropy focused on the needs of the whole world. About companies with the vision to get on the right side of history. About a global uprising of ordinary citizens determined to reclaim the Internet and make it a force for good in our world. Are we ready to get excited about the future once again? It’s time! And for you personally, this is all about that most elusive, inspiring, and beautiful thing: the quest for meaning. We were born to be connected. So give in any way that you feel able. Give creatively. Give courageously. Give collaboratively. And let the magic of generosity ripple out into the universe.

A wisely considered effort that ends in failure is better than timid inaction.

in some way, even if just by increasing its amount. If we focus on the imperfections rather than the positive good achieved, we’re falling into the trap of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The philosopher Peter Singer has pointed out that there is no clear moral difference between refusing to help a child dying in front of you and refusing to send financial support to an organization that can save a child on the other side of the world.

Numerous charities out there can credibly claim to save a life in the developing world for less than $5,000. Or to convert a year of suffering into a year of dignity for less than $100. Do you have $100? Which is more important, to buy your next twenty-five cups of coffee or to relieve someone’s suffering for a whole year? But after you’ve done that once, can you justify stopping? Isn’t there a case that you should continue to research and fund such interventions until you yourself are penniless and exhausted? Can you ever sip a latte with a clear conscience again?

Meanwhile, in Islam, the principle that emerged focused not on income but on the total wealth that someone owned. Everyone who has wealth above a certain threshold is urged to donate one-fortieth of that wealth (2.5 percent) each year to those in need. This idea, called zakat, is described as Islam’s third pillar. It’s absolutely core to Islamic religious practice.

Indeed, perhaps the simplest, most powerful moral question people can ask of their own lives is this: Am I a net giver or a net taker? The answer to that question will come from taking stock of our lives. The people we’ve hurt versus the people we’ve helped. The resources we’ve consumed versus those we’ve protected. The ugliness we’ve been part of versus the beauty we’ve created.

Back then, we called it radical openness. But today I think of it simply as, yes, infectious generosity. The Internet had taught us that if you gave away the biggest thing you could think of, you would be amazed at what came back.

And as I write, some fifteen years later, the decision to give away our brand seems like the wisest thing we could ever have done. More than twenty-five thousand TEDx events have been held. They’ve created an online archive of more than two hundred thousand talks. And those talks attract more than a billion views annually. A central team of just twelve people oversees the whole operation, offering guidance and training, and upholding adherence to our mission. Using a traditional command-and-control structure, you could never build an events organization of anything like this scale with just twelve people. This is an operation made possible only because of the magic of infectious generosity. We gave away our brand and our advice. And what we got back was a worldwide knowledge-spreading miracle.

In fact, this book is anchored by two complementary themes: The Internet can turbocharge generosity and Generosity can transform the Internet. Each theme feeds the other. If we see the Internet as a scary, inhuman mass of strangers ready to judge and exploit us, it will be hard for us to trust it with our good intentions. But without people making efforts to connect with others online in a generous spirit, the Internet can’t deliver its potential as a force for good.

head of TED for the past twenty years, I’ve had a ringside view of many of the world’s most significant discoveries, inventions, technologies, and ideas. A friend asked why I chose this specific topic to write a book about. My answer was that I’ve come to see generosity as the essential connecting thread between the most important lessons I’ve ever learned—as an individual, as the leader of an organization, and as a citizen of the world.

We’re odd things, we humans. The prospective happiness that shouts loudest doesn’t deliver. The version that whispers oh so softly can last a lifetime.

This Chinese proverb might be a teensy bit cynical about marriage, but otherwise says it all: If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. For a day, go fishing. For a month, get married. For a year, inherit a fortune. For a lifetime, help somebody else.

It’s not always obvious, but generosity is a core part of who we are. Whether you think we were built by God or by evolution, we are wired to look out for each other. Our deepest fulfillment comes only when generosity is a fundamental part of our lives. No one can tell you what your specific obligations to your fellow humans are. But it’s truly important that you find your own answers to that question. Your reputation, your long-term happiness, and the happiness of those around you all depend on it.

We lust after material gain, confident it will bring us joy. Indeed, our anticipatory radar overstates what’s coming to us. The reality is that most material gains bring with them only short-term happiness. We then experience what’s called hedonic adaptation. That is, we simply become accustomed to whatever we’ve got and start looking for the next thing we might aspire to.

One of the most startling findings from the Mystery Experiment was described in a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in late 2022. It estimated that the anonymous couple’s donation had effectively created a more than 200x multiple of the amount of happiness that their $2 million could ever have given them personally. The paper has been cited as one of the most powerful arguments yet for the case for the rich to be generous with their wealth.

So how do you build a generosity mindset? It may start with being generous to yourself. Many of us feel choked by a sense that we’re not worthy. In that frame of mind, it’s hard to look outward.

Building on that, we should seek to engage the single most important tool for activating our best selves: gratitude. As the Mystery Experiment demonstrates so powerfully, when we believe we’ve been given something, it feels natural and joyful to pass that gift onward. And it’s surprising how much we could be grateful for.

Let’s start with some very good news. Infectious generosity isn’t all about writing checks. Far from it. Many of the most awe-inspiring and effective examples of generosity are gifts of time and energy, talent and love, custom-fitted to a specific need. This type of giving is open to everyone.

To make generosity turn exponential, the first challenge is simply to get it noticed.

A crypto coin to put a price on carbon, backed by a nonprofit that can issue credible contracts for carbon sequestration. Each coin represents the sequestering of one ton of CO2. High demand for the coin could raise the price of carbon globally and help fund sequestration at scale.

As Jonathan Haidt and others have demonstrated, people are at their worst when they’re allowed to lob jabs at others behind a shield of anonymity. When their real-world reputations are at risk, they may take more care. I argued in chapter 2 that embracing transparency is a core part of how the Internet can motivate generous behavior. Indeed, I believe it played a key role in Facebook’s early astonishing growth story, gaining its first million users within just a year and then a further six million in the following two. This was not only in spite of being closed off to the general public but likely because of it, too. At that time, every profile was attached to an email address linking to an educational institution, which brought with it a layer of identity authentication. People were accountable to their real-life reputations and suddenly able to build on them in ways unlike ever before. But as this feature slipped by the wayside, and now without a real reputation to uphold, Joe Bloggs switched to User94843 and trolled toward this more toxic future. Bringing back this social dynamic, by requiring users to prove who they are, is perhaps the biggest single step big tech can make toward fostering a genuinely social media environment. There are definitely cases where people living under repressive regimes need ways to use the Internet anonymously. But the mainstream usage of social media should not.

in the case of generosity the effect is amplified by what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls “moral elevation.” When we witness a good act on the part of someone else to a third party, it has an actual physical effect on us—a warm feeling of uplift that inspires us to want to follow suit, thereby creating the potential for a chain reaction of kindness.

The Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh taught that attention is the most precious gift we can give someone. Certainly, all generosity starts right there—a willingness to stop focusing on ourselves and pay attention to someone else and their needs.

Threats, outrage, and disgust are compelling. Earnest goodness, alas, is boring. What to do? How about making goodness the very opposite of boring? Let’s be generous in a way that gives people goosebumps, in a way that inspires them to share stories and act in kind.

When you take all causes into account, more than 170,000 people die every single day. The plane crash counts for one-seventeenth of one percent of that. Perhaps you’ll tell me that deaths from bad health or natural causes aren’t so interesting. Maybe. But for almost every single one of those 170,000 deaths, somewhere a family grieved. If you’re a mother, would it hurt you more to lose a child in a plane crash or from a common disease? It’s about the same, don’t you think? The real headlines should be about the amazing efforts out there seeking to reduce that human suffering. To take just one example: In 1990, despite decades of development aid and medical progress, more than 35,000 children died every day. Now, thanks to the heroic efforts of those who have devoted their lives to tackling malnutrition and preventable childhood diseases, that number is less than 14,000.

A classic social psychology paper from 2001 by Roy Baumeister and others was starkly titled “Bad Is Stronger Than Good.” It showed that in many areas of psychology, the dark things in life impact us more strongly, and for longer, than the good things. Good parenting is often forgotten, childhood trauma can last a lifetime. Gains are liked but losses really chew us up. (This is why loss aversion is such a powerful force getting in the way of our generosity.)

Put those two things together, and we have a big problem. News outlets are mostly focused on answering the question “What’s the most dramatic thing that’s happened in the last few hours?” Both biases above push them toward stories that make the world seem alarming. Social media have dialed this up to a further extreme, and for the same reasons.

Exuberance draws people together and primes them to act boldly; it warrants that the immediate world is safe for exploration and enjoyment and creates a vivifying climate in which a group can rekindle its collective mental and physical energies if depleted by setback, stress, or aggression. It answers despair with hope: "How I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm," wrote John Osborne in Look Back in Anger. "Just enthusiasm-that's all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice cry out Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I'm alive." By capturing many in its far-flung web, exuberance overrides the inhibition that blocks action or innovation; like other positive emotions, it also enhances learning and fosters communal generosity. Infectious joy pumps life into social bonds and creates new ones through collective celebration and lively exchange. Shared joys rather than shared sufferings make a friend, Nietzsche believed, and there is much truth in this. High spirits beget high spirits; the memory of delight is laid down, the expectation of joy seeded.