In a world filled with weapons of war and all too often words of war, the Nobel Committee has become a vital agent for peace. Sadly, a prize for peace is a rarity in this world. Most nations have monuments or memorials to war, bronze salutations to heroic battles, archways of triumph. But peace has no parade, no pantheon of victory. What it does have is the Nobel Prize — a statement of hope and courage with unique resonance and authority. Only by understanding and addressing the needs of individuals for peace, for dignity, and for security can we at the United Nations hope to live up to the honour conferred today, and fulfil the vision of our founders. This is the broad mission of peace that United Nations staff members carry out every day in every part of the world.

Solidarity is a beautiful word because it means that you reach out to those who are different from you and who have to cope with different circumstances because we recognize that we all share the same human needs and same values. It is the values that count most of all. The value of freedom of thought, the value of democratic practices, the value of respect for your fellow human beings.

I view the award of the Nobel Prize to me as an expression of understanding of my intentions, my aspirations, the objectives of the profound transformation we have begun in our country, and the ideas of new thinking. I see it as your acknowledgment of my commitment to peaceful means of implementing the objectives of perestroika.

I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee. Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations. To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize — men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace. But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to build — a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action — a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.

We are not only all responsible for each other’s security. We are also, in some measure, responsible for each other’s welfare. Global solidarity is both necessary and possible. — It is necessary because without a measure of solidarity no society can be truly stable, and no one’s prosperity truly secure. That applies to national societies — as all the great industrial democracies learned in the twentieth century — but, it also applies to the increasingly integrated global market economy that we live in today. It is not realistic to think that some people can go on deriving great benefits from globalization while billions of their fellow human beings are left in abject poverty, or even thrown into it. We have to give our fellow citizens, not only within each nation but in the global community, at least a chance to share in our prosperity.

I think it’s —you know, it’s victory of the value of human rights, of the value of anti-corruption, of the value of anti-dictatorship. So I don’t think that I am the only one who win this Nobel [Peace Prize].

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to all people in Ukraine who are currently fighting for freedom in all its senses. For the freedom to be a free and independent state. For the freedom to develop the Ukrainian language and culture. For the freedom to have one’s own democratic choice and to build a country in which the rights of every person are protected, the government is accountable, the courts are independent, and the police do not beat peaceful student demonstrations.

Solidarity is not a matter of altruism. Solidarity comes from the inability to tolerate the affront to our own integrity of passive or active collaboration in oppression of others, and from the deep recognition of our most expansive self-interest. From the recognition that, like it or not, our liberation is bound up with that of every other being on the planet, and that politically, spiritually, in our heart of hearts we know anything else is unaffordable.

Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.

Solidarity requires the bonding together of a people engaged in common struggle. But solidarity also means standing alongside another struggle, not because you feel guilty but because you recognize it as your own; it means using what you have on behalf of the struggle.

I define solidarity in terms of mutuality, accountability, and the recognition of common interests as the basis for relationships among diverse communities. Rather than assuming an enforced commonality of oppression, the practice of solidarity foregrounds communities of people who have chosen to work and fight together. Diversity and difference are central values here — to be acknowledged and respected, not erased in the building of alliances.

I say solidarity is knowing the future is long and wide, with room for everyone on earth to enter. I say it's taking the long view of the job. (from "Letter To a Compañero")

In one sense, this is a healthy response because it recognizes that race matters and racism matter, and and create different experiences for people in this country. But there is also something important to be said for solidarity. ... It's important to say that solidarity is not charity. Historically, solidarity has meant the recognition that all our struggles are connected. In the socialist movement and the labor movement, there's the old saying that "." The point is to understand that when the majority of people are divided and standing up for one another, the chances of losing are much greater--but when we stand together, we have a better chance of winning.

Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results.