We have all these interesting challenges now. No one knows whether automation and robotics, nanotechnology, will kill more jobs than it creates. If it does, that presents a serious problem. What are we going to do? Have a few of us work to support everybody else, or shorten the workweek for everybody? If so, how do we get from here to there? No one knows yet how we’re going to stop cyber terrorism from wrecking honest discourse in democracy and maybe putting our very lives at risk.

The mystery of summoning up words. Where are they in the mind, in the brain? They appear to be an agency from nowhere. They exist somewhere in our ground or in our air. They come from unknown darkness. From a place we normally don't think about.

I think a lot of that first wave of entrepreneurship was missing the product of localization, and they weren't really asking the question, "What are the big, impactful products or problems that we got to solve locally, and forget about the U.S. or forget about Europe?"

There are many battles. There’s so much that needs to be done. We need to protect the environment. Save this little planet. Not just this little piece of real estate we call America, but save the planet.

Remember that the resentment and the anger leveled at the United States is not leveled against Americans as Americans. It is leveled against a particular policy followed by a particular administration, and change the policy or maybe change the administration, and you will find, I mean, that there is very little anti-Americanism in the world. There is a lot of — I mean, there is a lot of anger at an America that has been arrogant and an America that believe it is good, go it alone. You know, your unilateralism where you went to the United Nations thinking that they would just endorse your view, and when they said no, you said go jump in the lake, and you went and you did your own thing, and you landed in a huge mess. Well, people don’t want to say we told you so, you know, because you realize, I mean, after 9/11, most of the world was deeply — I mean, America was held in the highest. People really felt deeply for you, and I’m sure you all felt loved, and you dissipated it in next to no time. You know, I mean, chop, chop, chop, and it disappeared, but it shows, you know, it isn’t that there is an ingrained hatred of America. There isn’t.

I know that for a very long time my consuming passion, which was confirmed when I contracted TB — I had TB when I was about 12 or so — was I wanted to be a physician and when I got TB I was even more determined. I want to be physician so that I can find a cure for the scourge. And, in fact, I was admitted to medical school. If we had had the funds maybe today I would have been a physician.

What is rewarding about the priesthood is, one, that you have an incredible privilege of being privy to some of the most extraordinary things about people. I mean, as their parish priest, you visit people who are sick, say, on their death bed and they tell you things that they probably have not shared with any other person. You are privileged to bring the Holy Sacrament to people at a time when they are probably at their lowest. But you also have the privilege of meeting up with people at their moment of great joy, when they are getting married, or when they have a child baptized.

It is that you know that you are standing out in this crowd because you are being carried on the shoulders of others. You know, you may have the capacity to articulate their aspirations. That is maybe something special you might have. But what is a leader without followers? I mean you would have all of these interviews and people will not — would not necessarily want to follow. No, I am a great believer in the fact that everything is corporate. Everything is corporate and you — as a leader you are one who can coax the best out of others.

Many of us had moments when we doubted that apartheid would be defeated, certainly not in our lifetime. But, I never had that sense. I knew in a way that was unshakable, because you see, when you look at something like Good Friday, and saw God dead on the cross, nothing could have been more hopeless than Good Friday. And then, Easter happens, and whammo! Death is done to death, and Jesus breaks the shackles of death and devastation, of darkness, of evil. And, from that moment on, you see, all of us are constrained to be prisoners of hope. If God could do this with that utterly devastating thing, the desolation of a Good Friday, of the cross, well, what could stop God then from bringing good out of this great evil of apartheid? So, I never doubted that ultimately we were going to be free because ultimately, I knew there was no way in which a lie could prevail over the truth, darkness over light, death over life.

Just look at a Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa and Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela, and you’ll see that one of the outstanding characteristics of each one of these is how they have poured themselves out prodigally on behalf of others, of their being so utterly selfless.