Poverty is not just a lack of money; it is not having the capability to realize one's full potential as a human being

A defeated argument that refuses to be obliterated can remain very alive.

You can’t prevent undernourishment so easily, but famines you can stop with half an effort. Then the question was why don’t the governments stop them?

If the government is vulnerable to public opinion, then famines are a dreadfully bad thing to have. You can’t win many elections after a famine, and you don’t like being criticized by newspapers, opposition parties in parliament, and so on. Democracy gives the government an immediate political incentive to act.

I think one big thing about the United States is that the American population, they may be excited about Iraq or one thing or another, but basically has had a great deal of interest in humanitarian causes both within the country and abroad. Even when they criticize the mechanism to which it flows.

People's identities as Indians, as Asians, or as members of the human race, seemed to give way - quite suddenly - to sectarian identification with Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh communities.

Each human being is a citizen of the world. We have many identities, of which one of the identities is our human identity. And that's something that the schools can provide, but that requires again a vision rather than being centers of hatred. It could be an enormous opportunity to give that mission.