Walter Salles Quotes

Mexico has not achieved the advances that the population demands or deserves.

I am concerned about Africa. You can’t have 600 million people of one identifiable ethnicity going backwards and the rest of the world going forwards.

Africa is the continent that the rest of the world prefers not to think about.

Africa doesn't look like it's changed that much to me since I first went in '94. There is still a major economic divide, but the rights of Africans have changed and progressed.

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

I guess I strongly feel that we cannot pretend that the Third World is not part of our world. We cannot say 'OK, there's that problem over there, let's just close our eyes' - we cannot do that.

If you followed the media you'd think that everybody in Africa was starving to death, and that's not the case; so it's important to engage with the other Africa.

If you want to help Africa, you should help them out of poverty, not try to build solar cells and windmills.

The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off - we do not have to stand for this.

Haiti is 10.4-million people, of whom 35 per cent are children under 15. The country has always had great potential - and this is still the case. Our ill fortune has long been a matter of bad governance. And now things have changed.

The fragility and powerlessness of the state in large swathes of Africa, and the uncivil nature of the forces that emerge to fill the gaps, give cause for concern. In places such as Sierra Leone or Liberia, where there is mass illiteracy and up to three-quarters of the women have been raped, what are the prospects for civil peace and reducing widespread violence?

You know there's problems - you can see all the poverty and so on - but it's quite another matter to know what you can do about it.

Famine is about so much more than food: it is about a famine of education, democracy, health, transport, and so many other items. The food famine becomes a symptom of that vast failure.

Most people only see Africa in terms of poverty and war, famine and disease.

Without an advocate for the poor, without a new state of mind in America, the country lies on the brink of anarchy.

The world today is anything but trouble-free.

One of the things I find extremely challenging about the continent of Africa is that when the immediate needs and the social needs of people are not met, that kills dreams, and it's all about survival.

It's more important to try to do something for the crores of poor people of my country.

The world does not lack the financial resources to feed, educate and clothe its inhabitants. Rather, it lacks leaders committed to addressing the problems of the impoverished.

We are living in the 21st century, and children are dying of hunger, so how do we fight it?

There seems to be this sense among even well-meaning Americans that Africa is this black hole of murder and mutilation that can never be fixed, no matter what aid is brought in.

I feel a social responsibility. We need to open people's eyes. There is a lack of education in Ethiopia.

Well, as a general remark, I would say that I was discouraged by the physical and economic conditions in continental Europe after the war.

In Afghanistan, there is a plan to build democracy; hundreds of thousands of troops are protecting it. There is a plan to rebuild and reconstruct there. But many thousands of Americans die from violence and poverty every year and we don't have a plan for reconstruction at home.

It's so hard to write about countries like Haiti because there's truths behind the misperceptions people have. But there's so much more. There are multiple truths.