The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves.

Action had to be taken in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, but I am very concerned about the current administration's rhetoric and apparent zeal to expand military action to other places. I'm afraid that terrorism is being used as an excuse, not only for possible military action in such places as Iraq, Iran, and the Philippines, but also for exorbitant increases in defense spending that have nothing to do with terrorism.

Nuclear arms kill many people all at once, but other weapons kill many people, little by little, every day, everywhere in the world.

Hope is the strongest driving force for a people. Hope which brings about change, which produces new realities, is what opens man's road to freedom. Once hope has taken hold, courage must unite with wisdom. That is the only way of avoiding violence, the only way of maintaining the calm one needs to respond peacefully to offenses.

While the armed forces have intervened in the political affairs of every other Central American country over the past fifty years, with disastrous results, in Costa Rica we have peacefully transferred power from one administration to the next every four years.

It is essential that justice be done, and it is equally vital that justice not be confused with revenge, for the two are wholly different.

Peace is not a dream; it is hard work, and there is nothing naive, glamorous or simplistic about it.