You know when ubuntu is there, and it is obvious when it is absent. It has to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life.

A person is a person through other persons. None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.

You have seen after Katrina just what failures there are in American Society.

Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured.

The moment our dignity is undermined, we get up in arms and want to see our dignity restored - especially if we are humiliated.

We spend billions on banks when we know that a fraction of this money could save all the children in the world.

The abolition of the death penalty is making us a civilized society. It shows we actually do mean business when we say we have reverence for life.