Paul Polman

The world faces enormous human development and environmental challenges, from poverty and disease to food security and climate change.

Businesses and governments need to work together and make a joint commitment if we want to address climate change effectively and quickly.

Runaway climate change would condemn millions to a life of poverty and cause us to fail to meet the Sustainable Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030. This is not an acceptable outcome.

Companies are the first to see the costs of climate change.

Working together on solving something requires a high level of humility and a high level of self-awareness.

When women are provided with training and entrepreneurial opportunities in distribution networks, they become role models in their communities, showing it is possible to challenge limiting norms and stereotypes, and to succeed.

There are some basic human needs that are the same. Everybody wants to succeed.

My own fear, if I have one myself, is a fear of being obsolete. This is a world that changes very fast, and one of the main human desires is to belong to, to be part of, something. It's probably one of our greatest needs next to oxygen.

Sustainability makes good business sense, and we're all on the same team at the end of the day. That's the truth about the human condition.

If too many people feel excluded from the system and cannot access its benefits, they will ultimately rebel against it.

I discovered a long time ago that if I focus on doing the right thing for the long term to improve the lives of consumers and customers all over the world, the business results will come.

The basic skills of leaders are always the same: be driven by a deeper purpose, be a human being, have a passion for what you do, and it's also about hard work and ethics.