We need nature more than nature needs us.

I think we go wrong when we insist, as some have done since 1945, on using experts who are paid Western salaries, drive beautiful cars and live in air-conditioned houses to teach people in the Third World how to improve their living conditions.

The world is changing considerably and the United Nations must change too. It must become an instrument which responds to the needs of the international community of the year 2000, which will be quite different from that of 1945.

The success of any development project is based on encouraging people to shoulder their own responsibilities and become aware of their own capacities, their rights too, rather than providing them with ready-made solutions.

In the corridors of diplomacy people  gradually tend to lose their capacity to distinguish between what is important and what isn't.

It is now widely and rightly accepted that we live in a world which is more interdependent than ever before, and that problems are increasingly global in character. At the risk of stating the obvious, I would say that when governments realize that certain problems are beyond their powers, it is clear that the United Nations has an irreplaceable role to play.

Let us show great humility towards the peoples we wish to help, for we have very little to teach them.