“I strongly reject threats by any member state to destroy another or outrageous attempts to deny historical facts such as the Holocaust.”

Climate change…is, simply, the greatest collective challenge we face as a human family.

We have all heard of the web of life. The way we live threatens to trap us in a web of death.

You have to take ownership and leadership of tomorrow. For that to be possible, you have to strengthen your capacity and widen your vision as a global citizen.

The future of any leader or political systems is to be determined by the people of the country.

To measure the success of our societies, we should examine how well those with different abilities, including persons with autism, are integrated as full and valued members.

This is the moral challenge of our generation. Not only are the eyes of the world upon us. More important, succeeding generations depend on us. We cannot rob our children of their future.

The current model is global suicide. We need a revolution. Revolutionary thinking. Revolutionary action. Natural resources are becoming more and more scarce.

Since [violence against women] is rooted in discrimination, impunity and complacency, we need to change attitudes and behavior – and we need to change laws and make sure they are enforced just like you are doing in Cuba.

Let us take advantage of the opportunities presented by climate action and lay the foundations for a more prosperous and secure future for all.

Three decades into this crisis, let us set our sights on achieving the “three zeros” zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths.

Today, we have more than 110,000 men and women deployed in conflict zones around the world. They come from nearly 120 countries … Thanks to their efforts, life-saving humanitarian assistance can be delivered and economic development can begin.

Nuclear disarmament is the only sane path to a safer world.

One of the main lessons I have learned during my five years as Secretary-General is that broad partnerships are the key to solving broad challenges. When governments, the United Nations, businesses, philanthropies and civil society work hand-in-hand, we can achieve great things.

Energy is the golden thread that connects economic growth, increased social equity, and an environment that allows the world to thrive.

To achieve a Green Revolution, African farmers, must have access to land and security of tenure. They also need access to markets, technology and improved infrastructure.

The basic building block of peace and security for all peoples is economic and social security, anchored in sustainable development. It is a key to all problems. Why? Because it allows us to address all the great issues-poverty, climate, environment and political stability-as parts of the whole.

Anyway I read more contemporary poetry than contemporary fiction so my mind goes first to a kind of crass “conceptualism” that repeats vanguard gestures of the past minus the politics and historical context.

I’m not really frightened by experimenting – that’s the main thing. I really like mixing very old beautiful pieces that are from thrift shops or that have some historical value with quite new futuristic things.

It’s very much to do with how I’m feeling … I love to be experimental and use eclectic mismatched things and put them together to see what third entity is created!

In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.

A historical romance is the only kind of book where chastity really counts.

Actually, the only thing I regret is not making more underground films and bringing them with me as historical documents.

I thought I wanted to be a performing and recording artist, and played many recitals and performances beginning in the 1970s. In the 1980s I went to the British Library and ordered and received reels of historical women and men keyboard composers, and thus was born Vivace Press.

It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around…. It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.