When the Nobel award came my way it also gave me an opportunity to do something immediate and practical about my old obsessions including literacy basic health care and gender equity aimed specifically at India and Bangladesh.

I'm 58 years old and I just went through 8 back surgeries. They started cutting on me in February 2009 and I was basically bed ridden for almost two years. I got a real dose of reality that if you don't have your health you don't have anything.

My personal feeling if I can interject a political note is that I don't think it is right that basic health care is a privilege. It shouldn't be. It should be a right of all human beings. And certainly in the richest country in the world.

The dual scourge of hunger and malnutrition will be truly vanquished not only when granaries are full but also when people's basic health needs are met and women are given their rightful role in societies.

It's long past time we started focusing on the solutions that actually keep women healthy instead of using basic aspects of women's health as a tool of cultural moral and political control.

Women know the financial social and physical costs of not having access to basic health care.

I think all Americans believe in human rights. And health is an often overlooked aspect of basic human rights. And it's one that's easily corrected. The reason I say that is that many of the diseases that we treat around the world I knew when I was a child. My mother was a registered nurse. And they no longer exist in our country.

I learned that people everywhere are basically the same and have similar goals that we do. They want health and happiness and the opportunity to provide for their families.

And in fact you can find that the lack of basic resources material resources contributes to unhappiness but the increase in material resources do not increase happiness.

Feminism's agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to choose between public justice and private happiness.

It is soooooo necessary to get the basic skills because by the time you graduate undergraduate or graduate that field would have totally changed from your first day of school.

I think that if we get back to some basic fundamental principles we can make sure that we resolve the issues. And I think that that's what the Tea Party was all about. It's getting back to a constitutional conservative government. And that is limited but it's also effective and efficient. I think that that's what we'll be able to do.

Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion?

Every American regardless of their background has the right to live free of unwarranted government intrusion. Repealing the worst provisions of the Patriot Act will reign in this gross abuse of power and restore to everyone our basic Constitutional rights.

And here's the fact: the fact is it doesn't solve the problem. First of all if you taxed these people at 100 percent basically next year you said 'Look every penny you make next year the government's going to take it from you ' it still doesn't solve the debt.

Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.