Without effective states working with active and involved citizens, there is little chance for the growth that is needed to abolish global poverty.

From lying about climate change, to undermining programs that make up our social safety net, to opposing laws that reduce gun violence, to fighting marriage equality, the Kochs' tentacles infiltrate all parts of America's public debates.

Educating our children and giving them the skills they need to compete in a global economy is a smart investment in our country's future.

How arrogant - how very far from humility - would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a tidy-up-after-us God will come and clean up our mess? Hope for a nanny God, who will with a miracle grant us amnesty from our folly - that's not aligned with either history or the text of the Bible.

If we believe in an all-powerful God, then we must then believe that God gave us this Earth, and we must in turn believe that God gave us its laws of gravity, of chemistry, of physics. We must also believe that God gave us our human powers of intellect and reason.

Our American history reflects a long-standing tension between people and power. In fact, all government everywhere does. But our American form of government solved the problem, better than most, of moderating this tension between people and power.

Despite heated political debates on the future of our health care system, there is bipartisan agreement that health IT can be a powerful tool to transform and modernize the delivery of health care in our country. Health IT is about helping patients and their loved ones.

When I was first elected to the Senate, I was fortunate to be appointed to the Intelligence Committee. There, I saw up close the dedication and commitment of the men and women of our intelligence agencies.

Society is indeed better off when we share knowledge with one another and have open debates about the issues in the public arena, with the hands and motives of the players identified.

No one has a First Amendment right to lie to a federal agency in order to claim an improper tax status in order to avoid legal disclosure requirements on political spending and thereby receive undue tax benefits. That's a criminal false statement and possibly a fraud.

Addiction is a tough illness, and recovery from it is a hard but noble path. Men and women who walk that path deserve our support, encouragement, and admiration.

These core principles - helping patients, preventing medical errors, promoting best practices and improving quality - are the reasons that health IT is featured in both the 2012 Republican platform and 2012 Democratic platform.

Health IT helps save lives now lost due to preventable medical errors, from incorrect diagnoses and needless infections to drug mix-ups and surgical mishaps.

Any patient who has a serious illness requiring multiple doctors understands the frustration of lost medical charts, repeated procedures, or having to share the same information over and over with different doctors and nurses.

Getting past the influence of the fossil fuel industry will take courage, especially on the part of the Republican majority whom they so relentlessly bully and cajole. But we must do it.

Fossil fuel companies and their allies are funding a massive and sophisticated campaign to mislead the American people about the environmental harm caused by carbon pollution.

In a unified and diverse Spain, based on the equality of and solidarity between its people, there is room for all of us. And for all of our feelings and sensitivities and our distinct ways of being Spaniards.

Sincere and generous collaboration is the best way to fulfil the legitimate aspirations of each person and achieve great collective goals for the common good and the general interest.

We have a great country, we are a great nation - let us trust in it.

As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.

But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.

Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance... the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.

Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.

There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.

Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.

When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.

Power ought to serve as a check to power.

Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.

Sweden is an open, liberal, secular and democratic country. We strive towards achieving equality; we are forward-looking and refuse to be pulled back by social constructs such as religion.

The music of ABBA is not that happy. It might sound happy, in some strange way, but deep within, it's not happy music. It has that Nordic melancholic feeling to it. What fools you is the girls' voices. You know, I do think that is one of the secrets about ABBA. Even when we were really quite sad, we always sounded jubilant.

Feudal societies don't create great cinema; we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who,' and all that. But the theatre's full of that.

Ah, there's a director. Astonishing, Spike Lee. A feisty guy, but a guy who's, I think, incredibly misunderstood. I think people review his politics or his color as opposed to his filmmaking sometimes. Because he's a wonderful, wonderful filmmaker and a lover of the art.

The Islamic tradition does show some areas of apparent incompatibility with the goals of women in the West, and Muslims have a long way to go in their attitudes towards women. But blaming the religion is again to express an ignorance both of the religion and of the historical struggle for equality of women in Muslim societies.

A lot of our leadership has become acutely aware of speaking more fairly, of speaking more balanced, of recognizing that hate speech in any form, even if it comes out of emotional anger, is dangerous.

Whatever one thinks of the wisdom of building a mosque near Ground Zero, this controversy now affords us an immense opportunity to examine who we are as a people. It provides us with the opportunity to get back to our foundational ideals, which have always stood as a beacon for the rest of the world.

Palestine is the issue, and until this issue is resolved, there can be no peace.

September 11 was a wake-up call to me. I don't want to contribute to the hate in any shape or form. I now regret in the past being silent about what I have heard in the Islamic discourse and being part of that with my own anger.

It can't be articulated enough, that feminism means the desire to have equality between men and women. I believe that, and I act on those beliefs by going to marches and making a difference where I can.

I really love my family. The more independence that I get and the more freedom that I have, the more interested I am in being a dedicated and involved family member.

I've never been interested in a career in modelling, I was interested in my independence. When I was in school, modelling was what I needed to reach independence without having to leave.

When I was in my early and mid-teens, my style changed constantly. My clothing was inspired by 'Annie Hall' for a while, by a yoga teacher, a flower child, a pirate... name it.

When you're growing up with a learning disability, it shoots your confidence and belief in what you can accomplish academically; it really damages it.

I got to take classes in writing with a fountain pen, and actually, something you make is your own textbook. So, while you're learning about something, you have to write essays on it, and then you handwrite in cursive, in fountain pen, your essays out on beautiful paper and you bind it together into a book that you hand in at the end of the course.

I was given a new coat as a high school graduation gift.

The thing about acting that's unlike any other art form is that it's collaborative; directing and acting are a collaboration, and your acting won't succeed if the lighting design doesn't succeed or sets don't succeed.

Democracy matters because it reflects an idea of equality and an idea of liberty. It reflects an idea of dignity, the dignity of the individual, the idea that each individual should have an equal vote, an equal say, in the formation of their government.

If a relationship is going wrong, if a marriage is going wrong, the answer cannot simply be to say, 'You can't afford to break up because you are going to lose the house.' The answer has to be only one thing, which is 'I love you.'

As a Scot, I instinctively feel a sympathy towards a culture which is based on generosity. It's very refreshing. Afghans think they're the best people in the world and their country is the best place in the world, and it's strange because you go there and it doesn't really look like it, and yet they assume that everybody else envies them.

I'm trying to create the world around myself to be a place of as much equality and openheartedness as possible.

In choosing global corporate partners UNICEF emphasises compatibility with our core values and looks to build alliances that advance our mission of ensuring the health, education, equality and protection for all the world's children.