Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means.

It was incredible to me that members of one community could kill members of another not for anything personal that they did but simply based on their identity.

Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat.

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?

Education makes human beings more articulate. It transforms people. You can think differently about the world. It makes it possible for you to get jobs. It makes a dramatic difference. It generates a social equity that we need.

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.

We might have reason to be driven! We live for a short stretch of time in a world we share with others. Virtually everything we do is dependent on others, from the arts and culture to farmers who grow the food we eat.