So I decided I was going to invest my time. I spent Monday through Thursday at Frito-Lay, commuting from New York to Texas. Then Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I did my regular job in New York. It was an incredible commitment of time but it was an amazing developmental experience. It was challenging, broadening, and helped me reach the position I have today.

When I decided to sell my company, I already had enough. I live simply. I don’t own a house, a car, or even a TV. The less I own, the happier I am. The lack of stuff gives me the priceless freedom to live anywhere anytime. So I didn’t need or even want the money from the sale of the company. I just wanted to make sure I had enough for a simple comfortable life. The rest should go to music education, since that’s what made such a difference in my life.

Sherry offered me a list of research options: the one project that intrigued me the most consisted of finding out the environmental fate of certain very inert industrial chemicals – the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – which had been accumulating in the atmosphere and which at that time were thought to have no significant effects on the environment. This project offered me the opportunity to learn a new field – atmospheric chemistry – about which I knew very little; trying to solve a challenging problem appeared to be an excellent way to plunge into a new research area.

I’m glad now I did it. It took up all my middle years. I started it in 1972, and I published it in 1988, and my middle years all went into it, but I am glad I put them into it. Otherwise I’d have just been writing newspaper stories. It’s a worthy profession. It’s a good profession, but the newspaper, after it’s published, is something to wrap the fodder in the next day. ... A book sits on the shelf, and I really wanted to do this. I’m glad that I had done it.

Of the sweets of adversity, and let me say that these are not numerous, I have found the sweetest, the most precious of all, is the lesson I learnt on the value of kindness.

Even if we do not achieve perfect peace on earth, because perfect peace is not of this earth, common endeavours to gain peace will unite individuals and nations in trust and friendship and help to make our human community safer and kinder.

As you look at me and listen to me, please remember the often repeated truth that one prisoner of conscience is one too many.

To be forgotten too is to die a little. It is to lose some of the links that anchor us to the rest of humanity.

If I advocate cautious optimism it is not because I do not have faith in the future but because I do not want to encourage blind faith.

It is in human nature to contain both the positive and the negative. However, it is also within human capability to work to reinforce the positive and to minimize or neutralize the negative.