I grew up in Derry, of course, and it was - Derry was the worst example of Northern Ireland's discrimination.

I was grateful for the opportunity to make a difference. The political violence really started in 1970-1971. The political difficulties start a little bit beyond that.

I went to the local schools, the local state primary school, and then to the local grammar school. A secondary school, which technically was an independent school, it was not part of the state educational system.

Like everybody at that age, I read an awful lot of pulp fiction. But at the same time, I also read quite a bit of history and read that as much for pleasure as part of a curriculum.

My father was unemployed and I was the eldest of seven children. We were very poor. And when you ask how did we support ourselves, the only funding that we had was unemployment payments.

The basic policy of the British Government was that since the majority of people in Northern Ireland wished to remain in the United Kingdom, that was that. We asked what would happen if the majority wanted something else, if the majority wanted to see Irish unity.

They divided the city into three electoral wards, and in one ward there was 70 percent of the people, the Catholic population, and they elected eight representatives to the city council.

Before the arrival of the Credit Union, people who were from the poor background or a working class background couldn't borrow from banks.

My father was a civil servant, fairly sort of middle ranking, low to middle ranking. He worked almost entirely in what was then called Administrative Labour, dealing with employment and unemployment issues.

The civil rights movement in the United States was about the same thing, about equality of treatment for all sections of the people, and that is precisely what our movement was about.

Total ghettoization, because they were in charge of public housing, the local council, and they deliberately located people in a ghetto situation in order to ensure that they maintained control.

Therefore they should come to the table and reach an agreement that would protect their identity.

I grew up in Derry, of course, and it was - Derry was the worst example of Northern Ireland's discrimination.

People were so keen to get investment. In those days, there was quite significant unemployment in Northern Ireland, and that had been the general pattern in Northern Ireland for many, many years.

In coming to that agreement, my party had a clear philosophy throughout. In Northern Ireland, we should have institutions that respected the differences of the people and that gave no victory to either side.

If the word 'No' was removed from the English language, Ian Paisley would be speechless.

When people are divided, the only solution is agreement.

We did not seek ideological confrontation.

I think that's not a question that one can answer accurately. I read a whole range of books, quite a lot of history at the time, and still do read a lot. I read very widely.

I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.

Every child growing up will look to their parents, my mother and my father. My grandmother lived with us. I picked up quite a bit of family lore and history from her, which was interesting.

In working class districts, you had several families living together in the one house, and it was very difficult to get a house, because the politicians who controlled housing were doing so in a very discriminatory fashion.

These are the influences that everybody has. Some individuals might stand out because of one thing or another, but whether one's perception as a child of what was important or not is accurate, I don't know.

The violence had broken out in both sides, but our philosophy as a party was very, very clear.

The only thing I shall talk about is my sporting achievements at school. My primary sporting achievement at school was that I dodged games for two complete years and was well through the third year before they discovered that I had completely avoided all games.

In my opinion, what changed the situation eventually - and, of course, it took a lot of time to change it, things like that don't change in a week or a fortnight - was the new educational system.

That's the strategy that myself and my party have pursued and are pursuing.

There were two mentalities, and both mentalities had to change. There was what I called the Afrikaner mind set of the Unionist politicians, which was holding all power in their own hands, and discriminating, and their objective was to protect their identity.

They believed that Britain was in Ireland defending their own interests, therefore the Irish had the right to use violence to put them out. My argument was that that type of thinking was out of date.

It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups.

Today, unless women gain jobs and athletic scholarships commensurate with their percentage of the population, feminists scream discrimination.

This will be Iraq for all without discrimination among Iraqi citizens, or ethnic or sectarian discrimination.

Because of the lack of education on AIDS, discrimination, fear, panic, and lies surrounded me.

It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.

I voted for the Defense of Marriage Act but I do not believe we should institutionalize a form of discrimination against any minority by amending the Constitution.

It is time to end the discrimination against people who need treatment for chemical addiction. It is time for Congress to deal with our Nation's number one public health problem.

We recognized in 1996 that, with progress in the field of genetics accelerating at a breathtaking pace, we need to ensure that advances in treatment and prevention of disease do not constitute a new basis for discrimination.

Racial discrimination does not always violate public policy.

And the basis on which we agreed to operate with them involved a manifesto, where it states that we proceed from different ideologies and policies. One thing that we insisted on was that they should take an oath to reject racism and discrimination.

It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home.

The failure of women to have reached positions of leadership has been due in large part to social and professional discrimination.

A genocide in Africa has not received the same attention that genocide in Europe or genocide in Turkey or genocide in other part of the world. There is still this kind of basic discrimination against the African people and the African problems.

The Army has carried the American ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability.

The FBI has had a history of sex discrimination complaints brought against it, as well as race discrimination.

Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.

Racial discrimination, South Africa's economic power, its oppression and exploitation of all the black peoples, are part and parcel of the same thing.

It is distressing to me that we live in an age in which we still must fight to protect our civil rights as Americans, in which a hate crime perpetrated against someone based their sexual orientation can go unpunished, and in which discrimination is being written into our laws.

What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights.

I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.