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Daniel Quinn Mills is the Albert J. Weatherhead, Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus.  His tenure at Harvard lasted from 1976 to 2007.  He consults with major corporations and governments[…]
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The possibility of getting the human race off this planet inspires Mills.

Question: What inspires you?

D. Quinn Mills: Thing that inspires me most is the opportunities that we face. When I think about that human race, I think we are at the very beginning of a very long journey. It's really only about 6 to 8,000 years that we have had civilization as we know it, we are at the thresh hold and had been now we are stepping into space, we can get the human race off of this planet, the exclusivity of this planet, and I see, what really inspires me is those opportunities. What makes me sick is our very large inability to get excited by them or to do anything constructive about them.

Question: Who inspires you?

D. Quinn Mills:  If you began to go through the institutions of the society and you say to yourself “who are the political leaders that I admire today?” most of us don’t really have anyone. There are political leaders we support. They are primarily, because they reflect our interest. If you look at the religious community, they are fairly weak, the leadership. If you look at the educational community, it is hard now from most Americans to name the president of the major university. This was not true before. Now, in the smaller scale in other words names that I could give you that no one would recognize. There are a lot of them and very impressive in small business in local churches and local communities. That's America’s great strength, has always been America’s great strength. We, in my view, and I have written this, in my view America does not yet very good leadership at the top level and constantly our people bring themselves rise to the occasion and bail the country out of the problems that its leadership is gotten it in and that is this country’s great strength in history in my view. I don’t see any change in that, so it is difficult for me to answer that question.

Recorded on: 9/27/07

 


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