I have the impression that when we talk so confidently of liberty, we are unaware of the awful ... servitude of poverty when means are so small that there is literally no choice at all.

There is no human failure greater than to launch a profoundly important endeavour and then leave it half done. This is what the West has done with its colonial system. It shook all the societies in the world loose from their old moorings. But it seems indifferent whether or not they reach safe harbour in the end.

the wealthy white western minority of the world could not hope to prosper if most of the rest of mankind were foundering in hopeless poverty. Islands of plenty in a vast ocean of misery never have been a good recipe for commercial success.

It is only when people begin to shake loose from their preconceptions, from the ideas that have dominated them, that we begin to receive a sense of opening, a sense of vision...That is the sort of time we live in now. We...live in an epoch in which the solid ground of our preconceived ideas shakes daily under our uncertain feet.

Every single ancient wisdom and religion will tell you the same thing - don't live entirely for yourself, live for other people. Don't get stuck inside your own ego, because it will become a prison in no time flat.

It is a fact of history that those who seek to withdraw from its great experiments usually end up being overwhelmed by them.

The gaps in power, the gaps in wealth, the gaps in ideology which hold the nations apart also make up the abyss into which mankind can fall to annihilation.