Once you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you.

The Smithsonian has always been able to rise above the political moment. I don’t see anything that stops that process.

In the past, human progress had to come at the cost of the environment. If we wanted energy, we had to burn wood or we had to burn fossil fuels. If we wanted to grow more food, we had to expand farmland, often at the cost of forests. But technology and innovation means we're very quickly decoupling these impacts, such that this conflict is no longer true.

If you don't know what you're living for, you haven't yet lived.

There’s an interesting trend that occurs in times of mounting pressure and high uncertainty, which is that it’s a natural human tendency to seek out people that agree with us, that are similar to us because it’s a source of comfort in a world that’s so rapidly changing.

Good leaders are always at the ready, but not always at the front.

So I just keep asking myself, ‘Can you love someone who did bad things? Can you still love them?’

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

You don’t take a photograph, you make it.