Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

The trouble with the public is that there is too much of it; what we need in public is less quantity and more quality.

We pay for the mistakes of our ancestors, and it seems only fair that they should leave us the money to pay with.

There is nothing so habit-forming as money.

You never see a child die from education on TV. But make no mistake about it: children die from lack of education all the time. Children without an education are more likely to grow up to have HIV/AIDS. They're more likely to die in infancy or before the age of five.

I was born in Boston, and when I was two and a half, my parents moved to Minneapolis. And then from there, when I was five, we moved back to Portugal. But before that, a lot of family members had come to visit us, and we had been back to Portugal many times because my whole family lived there.

I was perhaps lucky to be born in a single-parent home where my mother, Shirin Mohammed Ali, was the sole figure I revered. My father's absence in my life in my formative years exposed me to only one person, who was my source of learning the lessons of life. So to me, listening to a woman and her worldly view is almost automatic.

I love just being in Canberra and being with my family, being with my friends.