Helen Clark Quotes

When women are able to live in a safe and secure environment, they can participate effectively in the economy and society. This helps overcome poverty, reduces inequalities and is beneficial for children's nutrition, health and school attendance. Every woman and girl has the right to live in safety in her home and community.

Grounded in international human rights, gender equality doesn’t just improve the lives of individual women, girls, and their families; it makes economic sense, strengthens democracy, and enables long-term sustainable progress.

Girls can do anything. We do do anything and we expect to be treated as equals.

Someone's got to break the glass ceiling, and once it's broken, everybody else comes clamouring up behind.

No country will reach its full potential if its female citizens do not enjoy full equality.

Never look back. Move on. Aim high. Etc.

Any serious shift towards more sustainable societies has to include gender equality.

I only take on roles that I'm passionate about. Life is too short to do things that you're not happy with.

If ordinary means I have suddenly got to produce a household of kids and iron Peter's shirts, I'm sorry, I'm not interested.

Equity, dignity, happiness, sustainability - these are all fundamental to our lives but absent in the GDP.

I deeply detest social distinction and snobbery, and in that lies my strong aversion to titular honours.

If the market is left to sort matters out, social injustice will be heightened and suffering in the community will grow with the neglect the market fosters.

We need a lot of thinking and ideas. We need all the innovators, particularly with the new sustainable technologies - how do we get them to affordability so that people can generate clean energy?

I don't know that you're ever going to persuade New Zealanders that they're not going to own their own homes and I'm not going to try.

We need innovation. We need great ideas that can be simply and effectively produced all over the place.

Adopting and promoting sustainable production practices require concerted effort, something which in practice is too often missing or insufficient. Making this shift at the scale required demands forward-looking leadership in the public and private sectors alike.

I think it's inevitable that New Zealand will become a republic and that would reflect the reality that New Zealand is a totally sovereign-independent 21st century nation 12,000 miles from the United Kingdom.

As New Zealanders, we've been in on the United Nations from the very beginning, played a role in the drafting of the charter - it means a lot to us that those processes are followed.

I'm not into power for the sake of it.

Well in the end the world can crank itself up to sanctions, as it has with Zimbabwe, another sad case.

I only take on roles that I'm passionate about.

I felt really compromised. I think legal marriage is unnecessary and I would not have formalised the relationship [with husband Peter Davis] except for going into Parliament. I have always railed against it privately.

We just sent our condolences to the President of the United States and the American people on what is a terrible, terrible tragedy.

In terms of protecting ourselves, the main issues are around how do we protect our borders [from illegal migrants and livestock and plant diseases], how do we protect our fisheries?

Marine protected areas, and particularly no-take zones, are very effective in allowing regeneration of fish stocks.

Fortunately New Zealand doesn't have land borders so we are able to be somewhat more rigorous on who gets in and out of our country than perhaps some people.

It is a very small minority point of view and I think, through continuing to set the tone of tolerance, acceptance, and diversity, you just have to further marginalize such people. Hopefully one day nobody will think that way.

Although biodiversity loss continues globally, many countries are significantly slowing the rate of loss by shoring up protected natural areas and the services they provide, and in expanding national park systems with tighter management and more secure funding.

Business can talk itself into a blue funk.

It's fair to say that, for much of my lifetime, New Zealand certainly was a property-owning democracy and working people, ordinary people, had assets.

In the end, there will always be a fundamental difference of perspective between New Zealand and Australia on defense, whoever is in government.

Innovation applied across the board of development is having a huge impact, and can have more. All sorts of technology can provide shortcuts, can overcome obstacles which once seemed insuperable.

Never look back' is my philosophy.

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth. Security issue or no security issue, there would need to be a focus on it.

Economic growth which strips out the planet’s ecosystems is not sustainable

I have no beliefs of a religious kind.

I think the penny has dropped that the All Blacks aren't automatically just going to be the best team in the world.

New Zealand and SA should take this dimension into account, the skills South Africans are presently contributing to New Zealand.

I think the issue of North Korea is one where the international community as a whole has to work to resolve the crisis.

Well of course New Zealand isn't anti-American.

Senator Obama will be taking office at a critical juncture. There are many pressing challenges facing the international community, including the global financial crisis and global warming. We look forward to working closely with President-elect Obama and his team to address these challenges.

Health and education are always issues.

Of course I have an opinion on many things but I don't micromanage.

If you neglect those who are currently poor and stable, you may create more poor and unstable people. There has been a tremendous concentration of donor interest in countries that are seen as particularly fragile - but it becomes harder to mobilise money for sub-Saharan, plain poor countries.

In terms of having views and being prepared to express them, yes, I think New Zealand's had a leadership role in a lot of things.

I think that generally New Zealand is respected for the positions it takes because it thinks them through.

New Zealand's been pretty quiet on human rights issues, which we will be taking rather more interest in, and in international labor issues.

I've been round Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and China in the last few months and the message that I've been taking is that New Zealand is building an up market dynamic into a connected economy. And that we are not the old-fashioned, ship mutton kind of product the people associate their export in work.

Of course as a small country you're not necessarily in the strongest negotiating position unless you're negotiating with other small countries.

People are optimistic about the future.