Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories.

You can do a lot with diplomacy, but with diplomacy backed up by force you can get a lot more done.

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.

It is true that the principle of national citizenship, associated with rights, and the control of a country's borders are two key aspects of modern 'sovereign' nation states as they emerged in the Westphalian order. But there has been much progress since 1648.

Globalization is a fact of life. But I believe we have underestimated its fragility.

In a world of plenty, continued suffering is a terrible stain on our conscience. It is inexcusable that we not strive, with every resource at our disposal, to eliminate suffering.

We often hear a lot about subsidies, because it's often the powerful talking about the poor; the poor don't have enough voice to question the privileges.