“Rwanda was considered a second-class operation because it was a small country, we had been able to maintain a kind of status quo. They were negotiating, they’d accepted the new peace project, so we were under the impression that everything would be solved easily.”

I used to say I never talk about my successor, neither about my predecessor.

We were not realizing that, with just a machete, you can do a genocide.

For us, genocide was the gas chamber – what happened in Germany. We were not able to realize that with the machete you can create a genocide.

It has long been recognized that an essential element in protecting human rights was a widespread knowledge among the population of what their rights are and how they can be defended.

There is a greater fatigue concerning the African problem today than five or 10 years ago. The situation now in Africa is worse today than it was 10 years ago.

A good parent, a good neighbour, a good citizen, is not good because his specific goals are acceptable, but because his successive goals are ordered to a dependable and socially desirable set of values. (1947)

An economy genuinely local and neighborly offers to localities a measure of security that they cannot derive from a national or a global economy controlled by people who, by principle, have no local commitment.

The curiosity of the neighbors about you, is a tribute to your individuality, and you should encourage it

If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.

Health consists of having the same diseases as one’s neighbors.

If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn.

If a neighbor is killed in a car accident, do you sell your car and stop driving?

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn’t make your house look any better.