What our world most requires now is the kind of education that foster love for humankind, that develops character-that provides an intellectual basis for realization of peace and empowers learners to contribute to and improve society.

Music speaks directly to the heart. This response, this echo within the heart, is proof that human hearts can transcend the barriers of time and space and nationality. Exchanges in the field of culture can play an important role in enabling people to overcome mistrust and prejudice and build peace.

What matters is the value we’ve created in our lives, the people we’ve made happy and how much we’ve grown as people.

Dialogue and education for peace can help free our hearts from the impulse toward intolerance and the rejection of others.

We should all develop the mind to rejoice in, praise and share in the gift of those who have artistic talents and a richness of heart, whether they achieve wide recognition or not. Cultivating such a beautiful mind is a very worthy effort. Culture and art are not just decorations. They are not just accessories. What matters is whether culture enriches the essential substance of our lives.

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.

To communicate the truths of history is an act of hope for the future.