“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.

The Aga Khan Award for Architecture seeks to make a better place in physical terms.

The Islamic ethic is that if God has given you the capacity or good fortune to be a privileged individual in society, you have a moral responsibility to society.

Foreigners cannot bring freedom, cannot bring democracy, because this is related to the culture, to the different factors that affect or influence that society. You cannot bring it, you cannot import it.

For some reason I seem to absorb the landscape and cultures where I am planted. A State Divided Symphony was inspired by the 150th anniversary of Missouri’s entry into the Civil War.

The notion that in order to have a nation it is necessary for there to be a common language, a common territory and common culture has failed to stand the test of time or the scrutiny of scientific definition of objective reality…

If most American cities are about the consumption of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture – not only national culture but global culture.

Our democracy should reflect our culture and our habits and our customs and our reality at the same time.

Apple has a culture of excellence that is, I think, so unique and so special. I’m not going to witness or permit the change of it.

I try to communicate in a way that allows people in on what’s going on. What’s better than references to popular culture?

But our culture is in truly bad shape if we have come to define respecting something as the failure to set it on fire.