Top 284 Quotes & Sayings by Estonian Authors - Page 5

Financial services have always been about trust. Perhaps the biggest barrier to entry has been getting new customers to trust an unknown brand or service, and that's particularly true with digital disruptors who lack a physical presence on the local high street.

I am obsessed with people that are obsessed with what they do.

Traveling is the only passion that doesn't need to feel shy in front of intellect.

The banks never sent me one chequebook. I'm very happy not to have ever touched one.

Most banks tell their customers that they only pay a small upfront fee for international payments. But in reality, customers pay much more.

Our civilisation has lost this bond between times, and tends to measure time with a yardstick, bit by bit, from one point to another.

Everybody has the right to decide their own fate.

Historically, people have flocked to Silicon Valley because of the belief that that's where the latest innovation is happening. It's a snowball effect.

My fashion icons range from bubblegum pop princesses to grunge queens.

Shaming people into being virtuous doesn't change behaviour.

There's one thing a CEO should always keep at the front of their mind, and that's customer needs.

Traditionally, nations have harnessed taxpayers to their territory by making almost all social guarantees dependent on working in one country, every day, every month, and for at least three decades. In creating free movement of people, this web has only got more complex but never disappeared.

I've never met a general yet who could milk a cow.

I have a figure, and there aren't many girls out there right now who have that.

People everywhere in the world have Russian connections. There is nothing wrong with having Russian connections as long as you're transparent about it.

We feel free. We're independent. People can be openly proud of being Estonian. I have a lot of belief in Estonia.

The world is becoming more global. More than ever, people are proactively deciding where to live, where to study, where to work. Sometimes it's out of necessity, sometimes it's out of choice.

The domestic policy of any president, U.S. or otherwise, is his or her own concern, as long as democratic norms are followed.

While in two very different sectors, both Skype and TransferWise were born out of frustration.

We're living in a world where international governance is failing to overcome borders, but technology is succeeding in removing them.

In Russia, tweeting or sharing real news that's embarrassing to the regime can land you in prison. Imagine, then, the response of the regime to 'fake news' that's damaging to the Kremlin.

There are lots of people building the next TransferWise, not in a sense of competing with us but in a sense of building large, successful companies that are doing something important. I just enjoy helping these founders navigate the journey.

There are so many instances in banking where 'free' simply doesn't mean free, whether it's opaque overdraft charges or credit card providers that are quietly raising interest rates without customers noticing.

Russia has had very aggressive military exercises. They've practiced mock nuclear attacks on Warsaw. Russian bombers practiced attacking strategic military targets in Sweden. The military aggression gets everybody nervous.

My American undergraduate education probably gave me a better idea of the fundamentals of what European civilization is about, better than the undergraduate education you get at most European universities.

I got a classical piano training when I was little, and we also had music study lessons where we'd have to listen to a lot of classical music.

Looking in the mirror to check if my tie is straight is a waste of my time. I only look in the mirror once a day, and that's in the morning when I shave.

I grew up in a small town in the woods of Estonia, and there was not much else around me besides nature. It was stunning, but I dreamt of meeting eccentric people and going exciting places. Music became my escape. I thought if I got good enough, I could leave.

There is no shortage of embarrassing facts about healthcare, and people die every day in the U.S. due to preventable errors - would you fly planes if you knew several of them would drop out of the sky every day?

We want to be sure that both NATO's territory and NATO soldiers are well protected. We need to make sure that there is the air defense and the air support for these forces in case that is necessary.

People need the financial sector to be safe; people also need the financial sector to go through a massive phase of innovation. That means delivering on the positive rhetoric, like around settlement accounts, not allowing Open Banking to be diluted, and leading the way on AML.

I am not always happy with the compliments Estonia has received.

I think that's the beauty of being a private company: you get to choose when you disclose something. You can play it in a strategic way or in a tactical way.

We don't exactly have the opposite interests to chimpanzees. However, things are not looking up for the chimpanzees, because we control their environment. Our interests are not perfectly aligned with theirs, and it turns out it's not easy to get interests aligned.

With a smartphone, we have a supercomputer in our pocket and are always connected. The way we bank is changing as part of this macro trend.

Democracy is messy, clearly, but it has one key factor, which is an orderly transfer of power.

I was in my early 20s when Estonia joined the E.U. For a kid who'd grown up in the Soviet Union, it seemed like my country had come of age. For a country that had been isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, it seemed like we were becoming part of the global community. It opened a whole new world of possibility.

Big data knows and can deduce more about you than Big Brother ever could.

Healthcare is the only civil system where new technology makes prices go up instead of down.

The human voice is the most perfect instrument of all.

Diplomacy between a powerful, victorious army and a side that's losing doesn't really work well.

As consumers in general, and with Millennials in particular, we're getting used to everything being cheaper, faster, better - and banks aren't keeping up.

The minute a collective alliance fails to live up to its agreement to collective defence, then from that moment on, everybody is on the run.

It's much cheaper to influence elections than it is to go to war.