The heart of the security agenda is protecting lives, and we now know that the number of people who will die of AIDS in the first decade of the 21st Century will rival the number that died in all the wars in all the decades of the 20th century.

As long as the government's actions are secret, it cannot be held accountable. A government for the people and by the people should be transparent to the people.

We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge.

Believe in the power of your own voice. The more noise you make, the more accountability you demand from your leaders, the more our world will change for the better.

When we respond to threats immediately and take action right away, it's usually the threats that we're hard-wired to respond to, the kinds of things that our ancestors survived.

The debate's over. The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona.

The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, `Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.'... You take action.