Well-fed people can enhance their dignity, their health and their learning capacity. Putting resources into social programs is not expenditure. It is investment.

A long time ago I learned not to put the blame for backwardness in Brazil on the US. We have to blame ourselves. Our backwardness is caused by an elite which for a century didn't think about the majority and subordinated itself to foreign interests.

The fight against hunger and poverty is also predicated on the creation of a world order that accords priority to social and economic development.

I don't need arms, and neither does anyone else... At the very least, a ban would prevent fights from turning deadly.

We've advanced in the construction of a true free-trade area across South America... What's needed now is less rhetoric and more action.

Brazil is in a solid position. In the past, if the United States sneezed, we caught pneumonia. Today, if the United States sneezes, we sneeze too.

If with so little we have done so much in Brazil, imagine what could have been done on a global scale, if the fight against hunger and poverty were a real priority for the international community.