UN General Assembly
1963

183. To aid the poor countries is an act of faith in the destiny of mankind. All mankind is one; and no part of mankind can either boast of for ever carrying alone the torch of the advances achieved by all peoples together, or presume that it alone can ensure the slow increase in our common patrimony. Attacked by imperceptible but quite irresistible and persistent erosion, a forest which today is flourishing, full of vitality and teeming with life will in the end slide slowly but irrevocably down the slope of gradual degeneration and annihilation. At that moment a seed, casually cast, it may be, on this wild and apparently unfruitful land, will sprout unexpectedly, grow vigorously and succeed to the declining forest. And life will go on.