This is the greatest honour I have ever received in my life. Peace has always been my greatest concern. Yet in my childhood I learned to love it. My mother - an exceptional, brilliant woman - used to speak to me about it when I was still a child, because in those years there were also a lot of wars. Moreover, I am Catalan. Catalonia had the first democratic Parliament much before than England. And it was in my country where there was a beginning of united nations. At that time - the eleventh Century - they met in Toluges - today in France - to speak about peace, because the Catalonian people of that time were already against war. That is why, the United Nations, which work only for the ideal of peace, are in my hearth, because everything relating to peace goes directly there.I have not played the cello in front of an audience since long years but I think I must do it this time. I am going to play a melody from the Catalonian folklore: The singing of the Birds. Birds, when in the sky, go singing: Peace, peace, peace. And this is a melody that Bach, Beethoven and all great people would have admired and loved. And, in addition, it springs up from the soul of my country: Catalonia.

In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed.

John Rawls

I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. Why thunder lasts longer than that which causes it, and why immediately on its creation the lightning becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life.

Leonardo DaVinci

Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.

Alexander Herzen

When I was pregnant. I exercised and was healthy, but it was also the first time since I was 14 that I wasn't on a diet.

Liv Tyler

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

Socrates

Goals provide the energy source that powers our lives. One of the best ways we can get the most from the energy we have is to focus it. That is what goals can do for us concentrate our energy.

Denis Waitley

I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.

George Meredith

No one can be great, or good, or happy except through the inward efforts of themselves.

Frederick William Robertson

From the point of view of photography, I'll smite the picture with sun rays. I'll take old stock shots and scratch them; I'll claw at them so that unknown beauty sees the light of day. I shall sculpt flowers upon the film stock.

Isidore Isou

Since turning professional at 18, I have travelled the world playing the game that I love and consider myself a global player. As the World No.1 right now, I wish to be a positive role model and a sportsperson that people respect, and enjoy watching.

Rory McIlroy

If you were designing the sort of information-processing system a brain is, it would be extremely impractical to store memories permanently in their original form. You need mechanisms for transforming and recording them; for chunking information into categories . Is your memory a phonograph record on which the information is stored in localized grooves to be replayed on demand? Is so, it's a very bizarre record, for the songs are different every time they're played. Human memory is more like the village storyteller; it doesn't passively store facts but weaves them into a good (coherent, plausible) story, which is recreated with each telling.

Judith Hooper Teresi

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,I stand and look at them long and long.They do not sweat and whine about their condition,They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Walt Whitman