From the category archives:
I consider it a great privilege to speak to you today on the subject that the organizers of the conference have proposed for me, “Strengthening Democracy and Good Governance in Africa: What Can Young People Do?” That’s for several reasons: That I am speaking to you, members of the World Youth Alliance. I know that [...]
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I feel privileged to speak to you today on civic engagement. I am particularly pleased that this critically important topic is the focus of this capstone course in communications. In my view, if there is one thing that should be at the front of your mind and at the top of your agenda as you [...]
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Since I have had an intimate relationship with the Margaretta Award from its conception, I have always felt a kind of co-ownership of it; the owning was mostly about my pride in contributing to its birth. So getting the call from Mary Rhodes in late March reporting to me that I was to be its [...]
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Words cannot express how privileged I feel to have the opportunity to speak to you today about interdependence. While interdependence is our reality, as a people we Americans have yet to acknowledge that and develop a culture of interdependence, which I believe should be our guiding principle in the 21st century. Enough—we must say—to the [...]
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The Salvation Army has been with me all my life—known as an organization that saves lives by serving people who need help in getting the very basic necessities of life. I am dazzled by its sustaining power, its ability to gather the funds necessary to perform its services– and the nobility of its cause. While [...]
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When Kofi Annan accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 2001, just three months after the dread 9/11, he cited the religious origins of our idea of interdependence—of the fact that we human beings are both individual and particular in our beliefs and practices and, at the same time, universal in our connections to [...]
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It is a great privilege to speak to you today. If I’m speaking to the choir, which I might be if you’ve been thinking about leadership and civic responsibility all summer, I don’t mind at all. The choir, after all, is trained to pay close attention to the music director, and committed on the one [...]
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It is a privilege to have the opportunity to speak to you today about hope. I could, in the season of the inauguration of a new president who has boldly endorsed the audacity of hope and who, indeed, has given hope to people in every part of the world, speak about Obama and his views [...]
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It is an extraordinary if not unique privilege to address this esteemed group of parliamentarians from every part of the globe. Let me join my local colleagues in welcoming you to Scranton, Pennsylvania and hope and trust that you will return here soon again and often thereafter. In our increasingly interdependent world, we have more [...]
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It is a great honor for me to speak to you today at this important meeting of minds devoted to the subject of human rights. We are here to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948. Such declarations [...]
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