Everyone can recognize history when it happens. Everyone can recognize history after is has happened; but only the wise man knows at the moment what is vital and permanent, what is lasting and memorable.

Remember when you used to watch TV in the '60s and you'd see Perry Como in a cashmere sweater? That's what rock'n'roll is becoming. It's your parents' music.

The history of struggle is rich with stories of heroes and heroines - some of them leaders, some of them followers, all of them deserve to be remembered.

We should never forget those on whose shoulders we stand and those who paid the supreme price for freedom.

Reconciliation means working together to correct the legacy of past injustice.

This is probably the last time I will have the honour to stand at this podium to address the General Assembly. Born as the First World War came to a close and departing from public life as the world marks half-a-century of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I have reached that part of the long walk when the opportunity is granted, as it should be to all men and women, to retire to some rest and tranquillity in the village of my birth.