Africa’s story has been written by others; we need to own our problems and solutions and write our story.

Listen more to the one who criticizes you and less to the one who praises you. Learn from them and do something about it.

We cannot turn the clock back nor can we undo the harm caused, but we have the power to determine the future and to ensure that what happened never happens again.

Let no one think that flexibility and a predisposition to compromise is a sign of weakness or a sell-out.

Aid leads to more aid and more aid and more aid and less independence of the people that are receiving aid.

In Africa today, we recognise that trade and investment, and not aid, are pillars of development.

It is the population which decides when it's time for a leader to leave, not foreign powers.

National security is vital for economic and social progress.

It is the first time in the history of Rwanda that political change in the highest leadership of the country has taken place in peace and security.

I grew up in a refugee camp in Uganda, and I lived there for 30 years. That shapes one's character.

Rwanda is a democracy not a monarchy.

. . . poetry, like all imaginative creations, divines the human enterprise. This is poetry's social value.

The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation — a force for construction and destruction.

Loving yourself costs nothing, but not loving yourself could cost you everything.

My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

More data is not always the answer.

Mercy among the virtues is like the moon among the stars ... It is the light that hovers above the judgment seat.

Though I'm not religious in the classical sense I did partake in Passover.

We had to move forward after the war and see the realities.

People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?

If you were to do a line-up of past suitors, it's definitely a very eclectic group, is all I'll say.