Peter Bell, President & CEO, CARE USA

Mrs. Okajima, my Japanese [exchange-family] mother [who had lost relatives in Nagasaki], wrote poetry, arranged flowers and carved beautiful wooden trays. She had written her life's motto in beautiful calligraphy on a scroll: "To make the world more wonderful." A couple of years later, when I was a student at Yale, I took a metaphysics course with Prof. Paul Weiss, who had lost relatives in the Holocaust. In our last class, he ushered us out with the instruction "Go forth and make the world less miserable." Ever since, on my good days, I think of Mrs. Okajima, and on my less good days, I think of Professor Weiss.
- Quoted in The New York Times