“My grandfather was a most gifted person, and amongst his many qualities, one of them had always particularly impressed me.”

The right to hope is the most powerful human motivation I know.

Tolerance, openness and understanding towards other peoples’ cultures, social structures, values and faiths are now essential to the very survival of an interdependent world.

It is a world of increasing dissension and conflict in which a significant contribution is the failure of different ethnic, tribal, religious, or social groups to search for, and agree upon, a common space for harmonious co-existence.

We try to avoid the single-building syndrome. You have to look at the big picture. If you try to put social and cultural development ahead of economic development, it doesn’t work. You have to do it all together.

Unless these unfortunates can be touched with the spark which ignites the spirit of individual enterprise and determination, they will only sink back into renewed apathy, degradation and despair. It is for us, who are more fortunate, to provide that spark.

That is something unique to Canada. It is an amazing global human asset.

God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation

Pluralism is no longer simply an asset or a prerequisite for progress and development, it is vital to our existence.

Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers.

There appears to be momentum towards more and more misunderstandings between religions, a degradation of relations.

We cannot make the world safe for democracy unless we also make the world safe for diversity.

One of the central lessons I have learned after a half century of working in the developing world is that the replacement of fear by hope is probably the single most powerful trampoline of progress.

Canada has an experience of governance of which much of the world stands in dire need.

While the past was a book he had read and re-read may times, the future was just one more literary work of art into which he used to pour himself with deep thought and concentration.

There are those… who enter the world in such poverty that they are deprived of both the means and the motivation to improve their lot.

Canada has for many years been a beacon to the rest of the world for its commitment to pluralism and for its support for the multicultural richness and diversity of its peoples.

Peter lost one of his shoes among the cabbages, and the other shoe amongst the potatoes.

Even those that are not frightful, and there is not one amongst them all that cannot be demonstrated within the boundaries of nature.

The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.

From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers.

By He in whose Hand is my soul, I have lived amongst people who never ordered food to be prepared for themselves