We develop sentiments that we are only going to work with people like us. But you don't build up a nation by working with people like you. You overcome a history of conflict by reaching out to people very much unlike you.

Organizations are accumulations of historical debris. They are not consciously thought. So when you ask the Education Ministry ‘What's your core function and who's your client?' they laugh at you. When I say that the client is the Afghan child - and the Ministry is an instrument, not the goal - it's greeted with shock. It's a new idea."

We must focus on our biggest enemy, poverty. There is no single-state solution to it, and that is a noble goal.

If election is your goal, you're never going to engage in reform. Reform has to be your goal. Election is the means. You run for office in order to do something, not in order to perpetuate yourself.