[N]o democracy with a free press has ever experienced a major famine.

Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity.

I think that so many of our abilities to do things depend on interaction with each other.

From the mid-1970s, I also started work on the causation and prevention of famines.

Education makes us the human beings we are. It has major impacts on economic development, on social equity, gender equity. In all kinds of ways, our lives are transformed by education and security. Even if it had not one iota of effect [on] security, it would still remain in my judgment the biggest priority in the world.

It’s very easy to capture pictures of jubilant people in the street after the nuclear bomb. But there were no pictures of morose people sitting in their kitchens and living rooms.

I really do believe that education, despite this massive potential in transforming human lives, has not received the kind of attention that people should have given to it.