From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
As a prosecutor, I recognize that our involvement typically begins when it's already too late: when prevention, humanity, and common sense have failed. Violence, whether in families, communities, or at an international level, signifies a failure of humanity.
A resilient position means that you are not always on the brink of war. The cost of war is so great that being on the brink is a deeply uncomfortable place to be. We have to make leaders and societies pay more attention to the costs of conflict.
Grief is perhaps the most universal human experience—live long enough, and you will grieve. When I see grief in another, whether a friend or a perceived adversary, what do I choose to do? In moments of shared grief, we find ourselves reflecting each other; your grief mirrors mine.
Beyond the atrocities of mass murder and rape, ISIS also set out to systematically destroy the Yazidi community by ensuring that we did not have the resources to survive in our homeland. They poisoned wells, burned farms, took out electrical grids, and destroyed schools, homes, temples, and hospitals.
most of the half-trillion dollars received by Africa since the 1960s has funded military coups and civil wars, not economic development. Between 1982 and 1985, Zimbabwe spent $1.3 out of $1.5 billion of foreign assistance on arms and ammunition.
There is no such thing as one-sided victory in diplomacy, perhaps in war there is, but not in diplomacy. You are always, or at least should always be, mindful of the other side.
I also worry greatly about how our world is now, with so many people and few resources to sustain them… with countries who are threatening each other with atomic weapons…. Weapons which can never be used because they would destroy the earth.
Forgetfulness of the past and the consequences such forgetfulness potentially produces. Extreme nationalism prevents nations from cooperating with other nations.
Nuclear weapons were invented out of fear. The United States was afraid that Hitler was developing an atomic weapon, and they had to get one to deter him from ever using it. When the U.S. Manhattan Project that built the bomb began, no-one ever thought we would use a weapon like this; it was considered beyond the pale—a weapon that would indiscriminately kill hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.
I firmly believe that a society cannot heal from the wounds of war without accountability for serious international crimes. How can a society move towards a shared future while fundamental disagreements about the past and about responsibility for past crimes persist?
I firmly believe that a society cannot heal from the wounds of war without accountability for serious international crimes. How can a society move towards a shared future while fundamental disagreements about the past and about responsibility for past crimes persist?
Human progress often comes at great cost to people who are willing to sacrifice for the sake of principles or in defense of the rights of others. It took hundreds of millions of people to die before we created a global security and human rights order and all of these are under stress. One would hate to think it would be another similar amount of deaths before we made more progress.