We have the tools, but we have to learn how to use them. That is my political philosophy.

We Finns represent a very transparent and open-minded way of reaching political decisions.

One of the biggest development issues in the world is the education of girls. In the United States and Europe, it has been accepted, but not in Africa and the developing countries.

The Baltic Sea is becoming more and more polluted. Not everybody living near the shore of the Baltic Sea is protecting it. It is the water of life for countries like Finland and Sweden.

When the problems in Northern Ireland started, it was not a question of Protestantism or Catholicism, because the Catholic church was the only church at that time-it was a nationalist conflict.

There are many challenges, there are many obstacles; let us try to change the obstacles to advantages.

My opinion on who's wrong or who's right has nothing to do with the fact that we have to bring together people who are against each other, to transform antagonism into cooperation.

We have the tools, but we have to learn how to use them. That is my political philosophy.

There are big issues, like the reform of the Security Council. These kinds of questions are something the President of the General Assembly must keep his eye on.

Finland had a civil war less than 100 years ago, just like in Ireland. If you look at the history of newly independent nations, civil war is almost every time present, even in the United States.

In Finland we have equal political rights for women and men. We do not regard ourselves according to sex.

I really do hope that the Millennium Summit gives new impetus to the work of the United Nations.

I think I can regard myself as a political decision-maker.

In international or national crises, there are always questions of lack of confidence. You have to change the minds of the people in order to get results.

I do not want to speak about overpopulation or birth control, but I think education is the way to give new impetus to the poverty question.

Peace enforcement is a much more difficult kind of operation than peacekeeping.

When my first child was born in 1962, I wrote a letter to my grandfather telling him how happy I was but how concerned; concerned because there were so many visions which were not very good.

If there is something I would like to do as President of the General Assembly, it is to place more emphasis on the issue of education, which enables a better life for women.

In Finland, we learned quite a lot from our own civil war. The wounds were visible when I was a boy, but my generation went into the Second World War and it united the Finnish nation, so I do not see any more wounds.

I recently reread an article of mine written in 1964, and I think it is still valid. There is not much difference. Many of the items on the agenda 37 years ago are still there.

Discussion is just a tool. You have to aim; the final goal must be a decision.

If you come to a negotiation table saying you have the final truth, that you know nothing but the truth and that is final, you will get nothing.

You cannot make easy decisions unless you first commit yourself to hard solutions.

If we go back in the history of different nations, violence and the use of force are part of their heritage. These are the traditions of mankind.

In every European nation, there have been problems in history when the society was too divided.

Men and women have roles - their roles are different, but their rights are equal.

I think we have grave problems. I am very much concerned about environmental questions, even though in Finnish society, we are not facing the most urgent problems.

Without accepting the other person's thinking, you cannot further your own interest. You need the other's help to get results.

Without rebuilding the confidence between parties, you will never succeed.

That is where consensus-building begins-with the idea that you have your own truth, but that the negotiator on the other side of the table has his own truth as well.

What we can do as individuals may not be very much on the global scale, but we have to start the change by living as we are teaching.

When he was twenty-three or twenty-four my father began to learn German and read philosophy in his spare hours, which did not look as though he were destined to remain long on board ship!

I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.

In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.

I'm working harder than ever now, and I'm putting on my pants the same as I always have. I just get up every day and try to do a little better than the day before, and that is to run a great restaurant with great food, great wine, and great service. That's my philosophy.

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.

I'd like to do policy and I'd like to do philosophy, I'd like to be able to get into the depth, into the meat of the argument - that's the kind of stuff I want to do.

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

I have two children. I have a daughter 29, and a daughter four. They are 25 years apart, so you speak about generations and I must tell you, I have a philosophy and that is every 25 years I'm going to sire another child.

What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.

Even if we don't know it or aren't aware of it, politics and philosophy are really what make our up lives.

There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation.

In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met along the way.

Punk rock really came out of N.Y. as a philosophy before the groups were ever recorded. I had a kind-of intellectual interest in the idea of creating a new scene that could be a grassroots thing.