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

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.

The Muslim world, with its history and cultures, and indeed its different interpretations of Islam, is still little known in the West.

There’s so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.

Soul is a constant. It’s cultural. It’s always going to be there, in different flavors and degrees.

You don’t want to raise a kid in a culture where the kid who asks the most questions is annoying. You want a culture where the kid who asks the most questions gets awards and gets another piece of cake.

Science seldom proceeds in the straightforward logical manner imagined by outsiders. Instead, its steps forward (and sometimes backward) are often very human events in which personalities and cultural traditions play major roles.

I was always drawn to more the social-expression-of-culture types.

Dear Society’ really is my letter to society where I express the anguish I’ve been caused from such an image-based industry and culture we live in.

All cultures have been mingled forever.

What is attempted in these film is of course a synthesis. But it can be seen by someone who has his feet in both cultures. Someone who will bring to bear on the films involvement and detachment in equal measure.