We are not merely passive pawns of historical forces; nor are we victims of the past. We can shape and direct history.

The determination to win is the better part of winning.

Where there is an absence of international political leadership, civil society should step in to fill the gap, providing the energy and vision needed to move the world in a new and better direction.

Japan learned from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the tragedy wrought by nuclear weapons must never be repeated and that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.

As long as we are human, we are destined to make mistakes. We all fall prey to flawed beliefs and views. What separates a forward-looking person from an intransigent one, a virtuous person from a malevolent one, however, is whether one can candidly admit to ones mistakes and take bold steps to redress them.

Self-centered anger generates evil, but wrath at social injustice becomes the driving force for reform. Strong language that censures and combats a great evil often awakens adverse reactions from society, but this must not intimidate those who believe they are right. A lion is a lion because he roars.

The role of humankind is to use the cultural and social environment it has created to devise new global values.... Human relations with nature are intimately bound up in interpersonal relations and with the relation of the self and its inner life.