Ameen Rihani, one of the earliest Arab Americans, devoted his life to bringing the East and the West together. We are not of the East or the West, he wrote. No boundaries exist in our breast: We are free.

We had a rule in the school that when you're punished, you carry out the punishment and then complain, which I felt was absolutely unfair: if I'd done it, what was the point of complaining?

Let us be good stewards of the Earth we inherited. All of us have to share the Earth's fragile ecosystems and precious resources, and each of us has a role to play in preserving them. If we are to go on living together on this earth, we must all be responsible for it.

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.

It has been said that arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity.

Sometimes in peacekeeping operations you show force in order not to use force - people realise that there's a pushback and there's a solid force there that's not going to be pushed around, that sometimes helps.

We were all children once. And we all share the desire for the well-being of our children, which has always been and will continue to be the most universally cherished aspiration of humankind.