Helen Clark Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Men who use terrorism as a means to power, rule by terror once they are in power.

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

The sad discovery of the adult world was the permanent truth: you don't always do what you want to do; you do what you must.

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.

Business can talk itself into a blue funk.

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?

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

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

Just remember enough never to be vulnerable again: total forgetting could be as self-destructive as complete remembering.

Inquisitive people aren't really very attractive, are they?

And it's the educated barbarian who is the worst: he knows what to destroy.

one doesn't measure friendship by length of time only; depth of time is just as valuable.

Life to most Greeks may be either tragic or comic or a mixture of both; but one thing it never is - and that is, meaningless.

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

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.

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.

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

The mind is more vulnerable than the stomach, because it can be poisoned without feeling immediate pain.

Nihilists expend everything and everyone except themselves. They are the indispensable men, without whom the world might try to live almost happily.

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

Civilization is a perishable commodity.

I have no beliefs of a religious kind.

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

Expect the worst, and you won't be disappointed.

People are optimistic about the future.

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

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

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

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

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