“It's all very well to rail against human rights violations or the absence of democracy, but when there's a need to vaccinate children, supply drinkable water, care for the wounded, you'd better step up. No matter what the host government is like. We're aid workers. Not politicians. We serve human beings, not legal or political causes. If we can make a contribution to a cause, so be it, but not at the expense of our primary mission.”

“❤ We must all find the spirit to try and help better humanity! We all have it inside us to contribute something to the cause of humanity!”

“But : We're still human. Human because we keep on battling against all these horrors, the horrors caused and not caused by us. We battle not in order to stay alive, that would be too materalistic, for we are body and spirit, but in order to love each other.”

“We must recall the most important of humanity guidelines: Be polite. Being polite is possibly the greatest daily contribution everyone can make to life on Earth.”

“What makes this inner void so difficult to deal with is that it's amorphous. We can't fix it because we can't pinpoint its precise cause. And even if we could, we wouldn't be able to banish it. It's the price we pay for being human.”

“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution.It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes.It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women's rights - and women's rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely - and the right to be heard. [From 'Women's Rights Are Human Rights' Speech Beijing, China: 5 September 1995]”