I guess some of the most delightful moments of my teenage years were when I was trying not just to educate myself but trying to educate others. And I could see how the lives of children could be transformed in that.

Belonging to humanity is a great thing for us, and I think the schools can do it. So I think we can look after the quality of education on the school even as we expand the availability of schooling.

South Korea at the end of the Second World War had a very low level of literacy. But suddenly, like in Japan, they determined they were going in that direction. In 20 years' time, they had transformed themselves. So when people go on saying that it's all because of perennial culture, which you cannot change, that's not the way the South Korean economy was viewed before the war ended. But again within 30 years, people went on saying there's an ancient culture in Korea that has been pro-education, which is true.

China had managed to reduce their fertility to a large extent because of basic expansion of women's education, not because of the one-child family.

Hardly any famine affects more than 5 percent, almost never more than 10 percent, of the population. The largest proportion of a population affected was the Irish famine of the 1840s, which came close to 10 percent over a number of years.

I think the UN's role - especially since it's not an extremely rich fund, and that's to put it mildly - is mainly to act as a leading thinker of the world in terms of how to think about the future.

Empowering women is key to building a future we want