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1. Discussion is just a tool. You have to aim; the final goal must be a decision.
2. There are big issues, like the reform of the Security Council. These kinds of questions are something the President of the General Assembly must keep his eye on.
3. If you come to a negotiation table saying you have the final truth, that you know nothing but the truth and that is final, you will get nothing.
4. I think we have grave problems. I am very much concerned about environmental questions, even though in Finnish society, we are not facing the most urgent problems.
5. When the problems in Northern Ireland started, it was not a question of Protestantism or Catholicism, because the Catholic church was the only church at that time-it was a nationalist conflict.
6. I think I can regard myself as a political decision-maker.
7. We have the tools, but we have to learn how to use them. That is my political philosophy.
8. Finland had a civil war less than 100 years ago, just like in Ireland. If you look at the history of newly independent nations, civil war is almost every time present, even in the United States.
9. We Finns represent a very transparent and open-minded way of reaching political decisions.
10. Men and women have roles — their roles are different, but their rights are equal.
11. That is where consensus-building begins-with the idea that you have your own truth, but that the negotiator on the other side of the table has his own truth as well.
12. If there is something I would like to do as President of the General Assembly, it is to place more emphasis on the issue of education, which enables a better life for women.
13. Peace enforcement is a much more difficult kind of operation than peacekeeping.
14. In Finland, we learned quite a lot from our own civil war. The wounds were visible when I was a boy, but my generation went into the Second World War and it united the Finnish nation, so I do not see any more wounds.
15. The Baltic Sea is becoming more and more polluted. Not everybody living near the shore of the Baltic Sea is protecting it. It is the water of life for countries like Finland and Sweden.
16. What we can do as individuals may not be very much on the global scale, but we have to start the change by living as we are teaching.
17. In every European nation, there have been problems in history when the society was too divided.
18. One of the biggest development issues in the world is the education of girls. In the United States and Europe, it has been accepted, but not in Africa and the developing countries.
19. There are many challenges, there are many obstacles; let us try to change the obstacles to advantages.
20. Without accepting the other person’s thinking, you cannot further your own interest. You need the other’s help to get results.