Symbols give us our identity, our self image, our way of explaining ourselves to ourselves and to others. Symbols in turn determine the kinds of stories we tell, and the stories we tell determine the kind of history we make and remake.
Mary RobinsonThe aim of human rights, if I may borrow a term from engineering, is to move beyond the design and drawing-board phase, to move beyond thinking and talking about the foundations stones - to laying those foundation stones, inch by inch, together.
Mary RobinsonDemocratic governments are not delivering on their promises, which is partly due to the fact that governments are less powerful than they were after the Second World War. There were fewer governments then, but they actually had more political power.
Mary RobinsonI'm struck by how very few people outside a rarefied world of true believers understand what you mean when you say human rights - that includes development experts and economists who are very keen to implement the UN Millennium Development Goals. They've told me quite frankly, that they don't know exactly what a human rights approach is.
Mary RobinsonMaybe this society, if anything, has become more patriarchal, and that has to be combated.
Mary RobinsonWe have long had emigration in Ireland. But the nature of emigration has changed. With ferries to Britain and the continent, as well as air travel, emigration isn't the cutยญoff it used to be. In addition, some of our young people are being educated to levels beyond our present capacity to provide the jobs they are qualified to do. So they go abroad. Many want to come back, especially when they have children they would want to be raised in the Irish society and in the Irish educational system.
Mary Robinson