For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right.

It is not in the United Nations that the Millennium Development Goals will be achieved. They have to be achieved in each of its Member States, by the joint efforts of their governments and people.

The U.N. power comes from concerted action of the governments.

Depending on where you live, your threat is much different from the other person. If you ask a New Yorker today, because of the way the press plays it, he will say terrorism is his biggest fear. But for somebody living on a small island state, then it is climate change, the rise of the sea level, for his whole island may be washed away. If I go to southern Africa, they tell me it is HIV/AIDS and somewhere in Asia it is poverty. This is also why you will find it difficult to find agreements, because if you want someone to be concerned about your threat, then you should be concerned about his.

I was an ordinary boy at school, a young man. In fact, what did the headmaster once say? "You're constantly challenging those in authority; questioning and challenging those in authority." Which was not really the way I saw it. I felt there were questions that had to be answered, and things that weren't quite right.

More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can master it only if we face it together. And that, my friends, is why we have the United Nations.

We need to keep hope alive and strive to do better.