Innovative Thinkers: Pioneers Who Shaped Our Modern World
By Sophia Maddox | December 28, 2023
Do Not Fear the Future if Greta Thunberg Is Near
Being an innovative thinker is a challenging job. It requires a natural curiosity about the world and a desire to make things better. It also requires an analytical mind to analyze problems and arrive at possible solutions. Most innovative thinkers are also risk-takers who are never satisfied with the way things are currently done.
Some people seem naturally gifted in this area, but if you look behind the scenes, you will discover they have endured years of tireless effort with little reward. If you think you have what it takes, consider what you can learn from these innovative thinkers.
When Greta Thunberg was 16 years old, she was skipping school until after the Swedish national elections to encourage people to vote for candidates supporting climate change. After the election, Thunberg continued skipping school, saying she would do so until her homeland wholly agreed with the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. For her efforts, she was invited to speak at the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference. In order to reduce her footprint, she took a carbon-free yacht from Plymouth, England, to New York City for the 2019 UN Climate Change Summit. It was there that she said, "The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say - we will never forgive you."
After graduating high school in 2023, Thunberg became even more vocal with her political views. As of December 2023, she has vowed solidarity with Palestinians while declaring that the Israel-Hamas conflict is directly linked to climate change.
Albert Einstein's Pioneering Contributions in Physics, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics
Albert Einstein had a profound influence on the world of physics. While students everywhere have learned about his theory of relativity, he also made significant contributions to the field of quantum mechanics and advanced the study of physics. In 1921, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the law of the photoelectric effect.
In 1933, the German Student Union placed a $5,000 bounty on Einstein's head while proclaiming that "Jewish intellectualism is dead." Suddenly finding himself without a home country, he traveled to the United States, where he described the book burnings occurring in Germany at the time as a "spontaneous emotional outburst" by men who "fear the influence of men of intellectual independence."
Despite his success, Albert Einstein failed at his last project: developing a unified field theory combining electromagnetism and gravity into a single framework
Exploring the Innovative Style of Steve Jobs, Apple's Co-Founder
If you regularly use electronic devices, such as personal computers, you can thank Steve Jobs. He is best known for co-founding Apple along with Steve Wozniak.
Jobs was adopted shortly after his birth. He went to college for one year before dropping out, traveling to India to seek enlightenment, and studying Zen Buddhism. After a disagreement with Apple's board of directors, Jobs founded NeXT, which developed specialized computers for education. In 1997, with Apple on the verge of bankruptcy, Jobs returned to lead the company after it acquired NeXT.
Shortly before his death on Oct. 5, 2011, Jobs told the graduating class at Stanford University not to waste their time living someone else's life, getting trapped by dogma, living with the results of other people's thinking or letting the noise of other people's voices drown out theirs. Instead, he urged the graduates to "have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Exploring the Cosmos With Visionary Astrophysicist Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan encouraged people to believe that extraterrestrial life could exist. He produced the pictorial Pioneer Plaques placed on Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft so that if the spacecrafts were intercepted, aliens would know where the craft came from. He also developed the Voyager Golden Records containing photos and sounds from earth sent into space on the Voyager spacecrafts. He was among the first to argue that Venus's high temperatures resulted from greenhouse gases. During his career at Cornell and Harvard universities, Sagan wrote over 600 scientific papers and worked on over 20 books.
Sagan received many awards during his life, including the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, two Emmy Awards, the Peabody Award and the Hugo Award. Sagan is quoted as saying, "We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good."
Discover Pioneer Isaac Newton's Legacy Through Laws of Motion, Gravity and Mathematics
Isaac Newton's father died before he was born, and his mother remarried when he was only 3, leaving his care to his maternal grandmother. Newton was also born prematurely and was very small for his age. Yet he did not let his childhood stop him from becoming a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian and author.
His book "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" (often referred to simply as "Principia") published in 1687, created the field of classical mechanics, and he gets credit, along with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, for developing calculus. He also constructed the first reflective telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of color. He went on to become the director of the Royal Mint, where he often visited bars and taverns to discover people who were counterfeiting money. Newton died on March 20, 1727, and eight days later, nobles, scientists and philosophers attended his funeral as he became the first scientist buried in Westminster Abbey.
Marie Curie - A Pioneer in Science, Breaking Barriers and Igniting Discovery
Marie Curie was the first woman ever to win a Nobel Prize and the first person to win the prize twice, once each in physics and chemistry. She coined the term radioactivity while working in Paris with her husband, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel. She lost her husband when she was only 39 years old. Only when the Curies won their first Nobel Prize could they afford to hire a laboratory assistant.
Despite living in Paris, where she was the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, she never lost her native Polish identity. In fact, she named polonium, the first chemical element she discovered, after her native land. Marie Curie is quoted as saying, "Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more so that we may fear less."
Thomas Edison - Illuminating Genius and Transformer of the World
Thomas Edison was among the first to apply organized science principles and teamwork to his endeavors. Edison's first patent was for an electric vote recorder. The result of relying on organized science principles and teamwork is that he revolutionized the modern industrial world at his research laboratory by inventing the phonograph, the motion picture camera and early versions of the electric light bulb. He has 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, along with patents in other countries.
Despite his outstanding achievements, Edison was deaf. He received very little formal education but was a voracious reader. After establishing the first industrial research laboratory, he worked to expand it so that it eventually covered two city blocks. Edison said he wanted every conceivable material to be available at his lab. Throughout the lab, including over his desk, Edison posted Sir Joshua Reynolds' quote, "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking."
Charles Darwin Unveiled the Tapestry of Life
Charles Darwin developed the theory of natural selection, which is now commonly accepted. After spending five years traveling on the HMS Beagle, Darwin wrote about his findings, and his publication became very popular. While Darwin wrote many books, his most famous was "On the Origin of Species," published in 1859.
Darwin's mother died when he was only 8 years old. He originally went to school to become a medical doctor but neglected his studies. Then, his father sent him to school to become a parson, but Darwin preferred spending time outside in nature to studying. After he dropped out of school for a second time, his father found him enough funding to make him a gentleman scientist. Yet Darwin continued to work hard to write and protect his collected items. He even became sick from working too much.
Darwin is quoted as saying, "The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability."
Nikola Tesla Illuminated the World With Electric Innovation
Nikola Tesla is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. After working at Thomas Edison's laboratory for a while, he opened his own lab, where he often showed wealthy people his inventions, including one of the first wirelessly controlled boats and an early X-ray machine.
Many rumors circulated that Edison and Tesla would receive the Nobel Prize in 1915. Those rumors say neither man wanted to share the award with the other, so they said they would refuse the award, and the committee eventually gave it to two different recipients.
Yet many of Tesla's inventions were commercially unsuccessful. He died in 1949 after living in a series of New York hotels where he left unpaid bills. Tesla is quoted as saying, "The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention."
Ada Lovelace, Developer of the World's First Computer Algorithm
Born in 1815, Ada Lovelace helped blaze trails for women in mathematics. Her mother encouraged an early interest in math, as she felt it would help stave off mental illness like the bipolar disorder her father, poet Lord Byron, suffered from. While working for Charles Babbage, called the father of computers, Ada was instrumental in designing the first general-purpose computer, which Babbage called the analytical engine. While the analytical engine was never constructed, many experts consider Ada the first computer programmer for her work showcasing how the engine could calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers if it had been built.
Ada's mother failed to love her to the point where she referred to Ada as "it" in a letter she sent to Ada's maternal grandmother, who raised her. Ada became sick with cancer and died in November 1852. She confessed something to her husband on her deathbed, and he instantly left her. She is buried next to her father in Nottinghamshire, England.
Meet Alan Turing, the Architect of Modern Computing and Codebreaker Extraordinaire
Alan Turing is considered the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. A native of London, England, he received little public recognition for his groundbreaking work because the Official Secrets Act covered it during World War II. He wrote the first paper that designed a stored-program computer. He became known as an early pioneer in mathematical biology after publishing his "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" paper, which suggested that chemical reactions in the body of animals were responsible for their unique coat patterns.
In 1952, Turing was arrested for homosexuality and found guilty of "gross indecency," resulting in chemical castration. After his death, which may have been by suicide or poisoning, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Queen Elizabeth II publicly apologized for the way he was treated. They helped pass the Alan Turing Law, forgiving the crimes of all people convicted under it. Turing is quoted as saying, "Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine."
Alexander Graham Bell's Amazing Voice of Innovation
Alexander Graham Bell developed the first practical telephone and co-founded AT&T. His wife and mother, who were born deaf, greatly influenced his work. As a child, Bell would sit in on family conversations and translate them for his mother using a finger-spelling technique that the two devised. One of Bell's earliest inventions was a machine that removed husks from corn.
Bell was a lackluster student until he went to live with his grandfather for a year when he was 16 years old. His grandfather instilled a love of eloquent speech in the young man. One of Bell's earliest self-appointed tasks was to develop a system allowing people to send multiple tones across telegraph wires, each with a unique meaning.
After he invented the telephone and married Mabel Hubbard, he would lie in bed at night reading encyclopedias to come up with new ideas for things to design. At the time of his death in 1922, he owned 18 patents, including four for the photophone, one for the phonograph, five for aerial vehicles, four for "hydroairplanes" and two for selenium cells.
Louis Pasteur Made Saving Lives His Life's Work
Louis Pasteur is best known for pasteurization, which was named after him, but he is also one of the founders of modern bacteriology. He has been honored as the father of bacteriology, microbiology and the germ theory of diseases.
To make his significant contributions, he overcame the challenges of birth into a low-income family, dyslexia and dysgraphia. He became a chemistry professor at the University of Strasbourg in 1842 and started his work in fermentation while working there. During this time, he is recorded as saying, "In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind."
Throughout his life, Pasteur was not very good at following rules. For instance, while developing his rabies vaccine, he treated an 11-year-old boy whom a dog had badly mauled, despite not being a licensed physician. Pasteur passed away on Sept. 28, 1895, having ordered his family not to release his laboratory notes. It was a request his family honored until his last surviving male descendant gave the notes to the French National Library in 1964, which would only admit having them once the survivor passed away.
Get to Know Henry Ford, Transportation Revolutionary and Assembly Line Pioneer
Henry Ford revolutionized mass production forever when he produced the first automobile that middle-class people could afford. Ford introduced the five-day workweek, believed commercialism was the key to global peace and introduced one of the earliest franchise systems. He was a second-generation immigrant whose father was from County Cork, Ireland.
Ford said two events when he was 12 were instrumental to his life. First, he received a pocket watch from his father that he disassembled and assembled numerous times. He also saw a Nichols and Shepard road engine being operated, and this inspired him to build his first vehicle when he was 29. On Oct. 1, 1908, Ford introduced the Model T while counting on his extensive network of franchisers to promote the car to the public through newspapers. Ford paid his workers a higher wage, eliminating a lot of turnover in his factory. Ford is quoted as saying, "Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, abandon any theory, if the success of the job requires it."
Amelia Earhart - Fearless Aviator and Trailblazing Pioneer
Amelia Earhart was the first female passenger to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. As the first female pilot to fly nonstop and solo across the Atlantic Ocean, she was instrumental in promoting commercial air travel and organized the first group of female pilots. She was also a prolific writer who wrote about her journeys. Earhart was an early and vocal supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. She disappeared during her attempt to become the first woman to complete a circumnavigational global flight on July 2, 1937.
Amelia's childhood was not an easy one. Her father suffered from alcoholism, and she was raised part of the time by her maternal grandmother. Earhart contracted the Spanish Flu in early November 1918 and spent almost two months in the hospital. She often suffered from chronic sinusitis and had to use a drainage tube implanted in her cheek to relieve the pressure. But she did not let these things slow her down.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Steward of European Leadership
Angela Merkel served as Germany's first female chancellor starting in 2005, and political experts often called her the leader of the European Union. Some experts even went so far as to call her the most powerful woman in the world.
During her first term as Germany's chancellor, which lasted from 2005 to 2009, she was instrumental in obtaining healthcare reform and saw the country through the debt crisis. She was reelected in 2009, and she oversaw making the country's military a volunteer organization and won more healthcare reform. She was elected a third time in 2013 and led her country through the European migrant crisis. Merkel was elected for a fourth term in 2017 and led her country during COVID-19.
Shortly after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, reunifying Germany, Merkel said, "Anything that seems set in stone or inalterable can indeed change. In matters both large and small, it holds true that every change begins in the mind."
Elon Musk Is Shaping the Future of Technology
Elon Musk is one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, with an estimated net worth of more than $240 billion. He is the founder or co-founder of SpaceX, the Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink and OpenAI. Musk has served as Tesla, Inc.'s CEO and owns the X Corp. In addition, he holds the majority share of X, formerly known as Twitter. He has described himself as a nano-manager who relies on iterative design methodology and has a high tolerance for failure.
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, before immigrating with his mother to Canada and then moving to the United States to continue his education at the University of Pennsylvania. He also attended Stanford University for two days before quitting to start Zip2.
Elon Musk can be very outspoken. He has said, "Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster."
Tim Berners-Lee Is a Pioneer of Digital Connectivity
Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system and HTTP. He came by his interest in computer science naturally, as his parents both worked on developing the Ferranti Mark 1, the first commercially built computer. He says that creating the web was an act of desperation when he worked as an independent contractor for CERN, the largest internet node in Europe. He says most of the pieces had already been discovered, but he found a way to connect them. On inventing the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee said, "The goal of the Web is to serve humanity. We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine."
Berners-Lee has been married twice. In 1990, he married Nancy Carlson, an American computer programmer. Their union ended in divorce. Then, he married Rosemary Leith, an internet entrepreneur.
Rendezvous With Inspirational Leader Bill Gates
Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft and was its largest shareholder until May 2014. During part of his tenure, Microsoft was the world's largest personal computer software company. In 2008, Gates started leaving Microsoft to focus on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which the couple established in 2000. He has an estimated net worth of $116.7 billion as of Dec. 6, 2023, according to Forbes' real-time billionaires' list.
Gates wrote his first computer program when he was 13 years old. He exchanged work to find bugs in computer systems and wrote computer programs for his school to earn extra computer time. Nearing high school graduation, Gates took the SAT, scoring 1590 out of a possible 1600.
Gates is an outspoken advocate on many issues, including climate change, education and global health and development. He is quoted as saying, "As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others."
Mark Zuckerberg - Crafting Global Connectivity as a Social Media Pioneer
As of December 2023, Mark Zuckerberg is the executive chairman, CEO and controlling shareholder of Meta, which owns Facebook. In 2007, when he was only 23, he became the world's youngest self-made billionaire. According to Forbes' list, Zuckerberg's net worth was $113.4 billion as of Dec. 6, 2023.
Zuckerberg's interest in computers started when he was in middle school. He wrote a program that allowed school computers to communicate with the computer in his father's dental office. His love of computers continued, and he started Facebook as a student at Harvard University with co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Instantly, they hit problems with people complaining that they invaded their privacy. He dropped out of Harvard as a sophomore. Zuckerberg has often been asked about his success. He is quoted as saying, "In a world that's changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks."
Venture to New Heights With Sir Richard Branson's Maverick Entrepreneurial Spirit
In the 1970s, Sir Richard Branson founded Virgin Group, which has grown to include more than 400 companies. Branson's first business venture was producing a magazine called "Student." Soon, he opened a series of record stores. Then, once train travel in Europe was privatized, he started offering train tickets. In 2000, Branson was knighted at Buckingham Palace for services to entrepreneurship.
In 2004, Branson founded Virgin Galactic. In December 2023, he announced that he did not plan to invest any more money into Virgin Galactic. He says the company's Delta ships should give the company a positive cash flow in 2024. Delta ships are expected to enter service in 2026, carrying tourists and cargo from key suppliers into space. When Branson started funding Virgin Galactic, he said, "Unless you dream, you're not going to achieve anything."
Jeff Bezos Unleashes E-Commerce Dominance as a Visionary Leader
Jeff Bezos is Amazon's chairman. He has grown the company into the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing company. In addition, Amazon is the largest online sales company, the largest internet company by revenue, and the largest provider of virtual assistants and cloud infrastructure services. Bezos founded Amazon as an online bookstore on a 1994 road trip from New York City to Seattle.
In 2015, Bezos founded Blue Origin. As of Dec. 6, 2023, his net worth is estimated at $166.9 billion. Blue Origin is dedicated to building a road to space for the benefit of the earth and is a NASA partner that will fly a lunar lander and a cislunar transporter to the moon. Jeff Bezos said, "We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry, and move it into space. And keep Earth as this beautiful gem of a planet that it is."
Malala Yousafzai Is an Unstoppable Force for Global Change
When the BBC approached Malala Yousafzai's father in 2008 to find a girl who would regularly share her experience trying to get an education under the Taliban, he looked everywhere. Families stopped many girls, but Malala's dad suggested she do it. An assassin working with the Taliban shot Malala in the head as she returned home from school. The shot almost killed Malala, who was life-flighted to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, United Kingdom. The near-death experience did not deter Malala, who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, making her the youngest person to receive the honor.
She was not deterred at all by the death threats. As a 26-year-old, she delivered an address on Dec. 5, 2023, at the annual Nelson Mandela lecture in Johannesburg on the 10th anniversary of the death of South Africa's anti-apartheid leader. She became the youngest person ever to give the address previously provided by President Barack Obama, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and Bill Gates. In her speech dedicated to Afghan women, she asked, "It took a bullet to my head for the world to stand with me. What will it take for the world to stand with girls in Afghanistan?"
Frank Lloyd Wright Crafted Timeless Masterpieces
Frank Lloyd Wright worked more than 70 years to design over 1,000 structures. He created the movement of organic architecture as he tried to blend humanity and the environment seamlessly. He was a prolific author and lecturer. In 2019 the American Institute of Architects named him the greatest American architect ever. Wright's childhood was not a happy one, as his family constantly struggled with unrelieved poverty and unstable emotions.
Wright began his architectural career following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, working for $8 a week as a draftsman. In 1893, he opened his architectural firm. In 1901, he began designing homes in his iconic Prairie style. In 1911, Wright took his portfolio containing over 100 house designs to Europe, and in 1917, he took it to Japan. Wright designed some of his most important structures — such as Fallingwater, Taliesin West and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum — near the end of his career. He said, "Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you."
Take Lessons From Naturalist Sir David Attenborough
Sir David Attenborough is best known for his nine natural history documentary series, the "Life Collection," which comprehensively surveys the earth's animals and plants. Attenborough and his team used innovative filming techniques to capture animals and events that had previously never been captured on film. He took his work seriously and worked hard to gain the trust of notable wildlife scientists. Starting with "The Living Planet" in 1979, Attenborough focused his series on animal adaptations. He followed that series with a series spotlighting particular geographical locations. After a 20-year career, he finished the series with shows on amphibians and reptiles.
He is an outspoken advocate for eating less meat and adopting a vegetarian lifestyle. In an interview with "Radio Times," he said, "The planet can't support billions of meat-eaters. If we all ate only plants, we'd need only half the land we use at the moment."
Naomi Klein, Champion for Climate Justice and Social Change
Naomi Klein is the co-director of the Center for Climate Justice. She has won the Sydney Peace Prize and the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction for her body of work, including documentaries and nonfiction books. Her rise to fame started with her writing "No Logo," in which she attacked large companies for exploiting women.
Klein was born to parents who emigrated from the United States in 1967 in protest of the Vietnam War. The couple made documentaries protesting the war. She is married to Avi Lewis, whose family is involved in Democratic politics. Naomi is quoted as saying, "Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear."
Martin Luther King, Jr. Shaped the World's Civil Rights Ideals
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist pastor who advocated for the right to vote, desegregation and labor rights. As the Southern Christian Leadership Conference leader, he led the Albany Movement, numerous nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama and the 1963 March on Washington. In 1964, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting against racial inequality. Assassinated on April 4, 1968, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2003.
King was an innovative thinker because of his nonviolent civil disobedience and the power of love to combat systemic racism. He had a strong ability to articulate his vision, as evinced in his "I Have a Dream" speech. He said, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
Unraveling the Mysteries of the Cosmos With Stephen Hawking
From 1979 to 2009, Stephen Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, widely viewed as one of the most prestigious academic posts in the world. His prediction that black holes emit radiation, called Hawking radiation, became commonly accepted in the 1970s. He was among the first to combine the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics to explain the cosmos. His book "A Brief History of Time" appeared on the Sunday Times bestseller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks. Hawking was diagnosed with motor neuron disease before he was 26, but he did not let it hold him back.
Pushed by his editor, Peter Guzzardi, Stephen Hawking developed the knack of explaining complex ideas about the universe in terms that laypeople could understand. This led to his book being made into a movie. It also led him to write a children's book with his daughter. Despite his physical challenges, Hawking inspired many by saying, "However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at."
Unveiling the Genius of Susan Kare, Architect of Digital Revolution Graphics
Susan Kare has been a design consultant for Microsoft, IBM, Sony Pictures, Facebook and Pinterest. Still, she is best known as the designer who contributed interface elements and typefaces for the first Apple Macintosh personal computer. As a child at her mother's knee, she learned she learned basic art skills like counted cross-stitch, painting and crafting. She holds a doctorate in arts from New York University.
After receiving a phone call from a high school classmate asking her if she would be interested in designing icons for the first computer, she immersed herself in pixel art using a grid notebook bought at a local dime store. After getting called for the interview, she headed to the library to learn more. When she showed up for the interview, she carried her library books and notebook. The interviewers were impressed and hired her. Kare said, "Icon design is like solving a puzzle, trying to marry an image and idea that, ideally, will be easy for people to understand and remember."
Explore the Unique Talents of Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her numerous films, including "Samson and Delilah," during Hollywood's Golden Age. At the start of World War II, she worked with composer George Antheil to develop a radio guidance system that identified Allied torpedoes. She was also instrumental in selling war bonds in front of crowds during the war.
At 18, Lamarr, born in Austria, married Friedrich Mandl. He was 33 years old when they wed. The marriage was not happy, and Lamarr eventually left for Vienna, where her film career started. She has been quoted as saying, "Hope and curiosity about the future seemed better than guarantees. The unknown was always so attractive to me ... and still is."
