Who knows better than a peasant farmer the agricultural conditions in his country or region? It is not always necessary to send an FAO expert to tell him what crops to grow or what seeds to use. Give him the seeds he asks for, and he will do the rest. Don't tell him how to renovate his irrigation system: give him the necessary equipment and he will do the job far better than us.

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

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.

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

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.

As the dolphin becomes just another victim of humanity's utilitarian attitudes towards the earth, it seems as though the ancient friendship between our respective species is no longer entirely reciprocal. Such exploitation is nowhere more evident than in the capture and display of cetaceans for profit. Stripped of their natural identity, deprived of their own culture and environment, the dolphin and whale incarcerated within the oceanarium not only symbolizes an abuse of that ancient relationship, but above all our estrangement from nature as a whole.

We need nature more than nature needs us.