UNESCO. General Conference; 30th; Records ... - unesdoc - Unesco

imagination. Like many other nations, Venezuela has experienced the tragic contradiction of possessing the wealth
that buys anything with a price tag, while often forgetting its value, and when value is forgotten and only the price
is known, this usually leaves a dramatic trail of imbalances of all sorts and, above all, social imbalances,
frustrations and poverty. Thus the poet Antonio Machado warned that “it is foolish to confuse value and price”.
(17.4) You, Mr President, right from the recent start of your term of office have dared to call a halt to many
trends and resolutely to review many aspects of national life. A review does not mean wiping the slate clean, but
keeping what is best and the best people and changing what must be changed. I have often repeated a maxim of
Albert Einstein’s, because of its fundamental bearing on decision-making, that: “In times of crisis imagination is
more important than knowledge”. Both are necessary - to have imagination and to possess knowledge - but after
that one must dare.
(17.5) I have recounted how many years ago when travelling to Oxford as a young professor of biochemistry, I
noticed the motto Sapere Aude - “Dare to know”. My experience in the United Kingdom convinced me that we
must dare to know, but that we must also know how to dare. Knowing how to dare, ladies and gentlemen, is
absolutely indispensable for correcting our current course. Yes, I have also said so here, and it is my experience as
a scientist and as Director-General of UNESCO: to dare without knowledge is a risk and hence dangerous, but
knowledge without risk is useless. Therefore, possessing knowledge, surrounding oneself with those who know and
listening to those who can provide advice is absolutely essential if we wish to modify our present course and,
through UNESCO, provide all citizens, those of your country, Mr President, and those of the world, with those new
guidelines and new references which are today absolutely indispensable. We must be guided by those lofty stars.
As Fernando Pesoa put it so beautifully: “The moon is reflected in the sea and in ponds and puddles because it
rides so high, for in no other manner could it guide us”. Such are the values that must direct us always.
(17.6) Hence, Mr President, the magnitude of your responsibility today. Our century will be remembered,
perhaps more than for any other event, for the endless succession of frustrated hopes of a vast number of people.
How many have been sacrificed for causes that deserved to be experienced? How many lives have been sacrificed
to violence and force? How many people believed that finally they could speak freely, cease being hungry and
thirsty, have access to education and envisage a better future for their children? How many of these dreams have
materialized? Very few. But also, when we are told we have to be realistic and pragmatic, I challenge anyone to
give me a single example of anything the pragmatics and the realists have changed. The point is that realists cannot
change reality since they buy into it and accept it. Only those who are capable of looking beyond reality, who are at
odds with reality, can transform it. And to transform the reality that besets us today, I believe it is urgent to have
these points of reference, these values to which I have referred.
(17.7) I was speaking, Mr President, of the magnitude of your responsibility because you have dared to call a
halt to the prevailing trends and imbalances. Your country is going through a political experience unprecedented in
the recent history of Latin America. I earnestly hope that the outcome will be for the good of your people and I
wish you every success in this effort because, as you well know, the ailments of freedom are tended with less
freedom, the ailments of democracy are not tended with less democracy but by heeding the people and seeing that
their voice prevails. Democracy means heeding that voice which cannot be muffled, that voice which must guide
our footsteps.
(17.8) A few days ago, during your tour of the Far East, you said: “The market does not put societies right; the
market does not make republics because it rests upon the kind of individualism that has given rise to a world in
which we are like savages pitted against one another”.
(17.9) Mr President, here at UNESCO, many years ago we said that it was, for sure, economic guidelines, in
conjunction with social models and particular values, that should at the dawn of the new millennium change the
course of the world. It is certainly the case today that we are facing a major challenge and have proclaimed the
fundamental values of democracy embodied in our Constitution, the only constitution in the United Nations system
that speaks of democratic ideals, justice, liberty, equality and solidarity. But our own Constitution also warns us
that it is not simply through economic development that the problems of our time can be solved; it is not simply
through political arrangements, which are essential, that well-being and peace can be achieved. It is, as the
UNESCO Constitution concludes, through the “intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind”.
(17.10) Mr President, I am honoured and gratified to give you the warmest possible welcome to this house open
to all peoples, this universal meeting space, this home to all the cultures of the world, which is of course
Venezuela’s home. Allow me to end with a quotation from a great Mexican, Alfonso Reyes, who, in pleading
against intolerance and exclusion, once wrote: “Let us be generously universal in order to be profitably national”.
And, to be profitably national, just a moment ago, when I was awarding you the UNESCO medal of the Liberator
Simón Bolívar, we read together on this medal of excellence of the Organization: “Education is the basis of
freedom”. Welcome, Mr President, to your home.
(17.11) Ladies and gentlemen, I shall now award the medal of the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights to Mr René de Sola.
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