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If our hopes of building a better and safer world are to become more than wishful thinking, we will need the engagement of volunteers more than ever.

Kofi Annan

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Kofi Annan
Age: 80 †
Born: 1938
Born: April 8
Died: 2018
Died: August 18
Diplomat
Economist
Politician
Coomassie
Kofi Atta Annan
Annan
Kofi A. Annan
World
Wish
Helping
Volunteers
Become
Wishful
Better
Safer
Ever
Volunteer
Need
Engagement
Needs
Hopes
Thinking
Building

More quotes by Kofi Annan

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If tolerance, respect and equity permeate family life, they will translate into values that shape societies, nations and the world.
Kofi Annan
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I often quote an African proverb that says: The world is not ours, the earth is not ours, It's a treasure we hold in trust for future generations. And I often hope we will be worthy of that trust.
Kofi Annan
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Once you are really challenged, you find something in yourself. Man doesn't know what he is capable of until he is asked.
Kofi Annan
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Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories.
Kofi Annan
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If you are neutral in a situation where one side is patently being mistreated, the conclusion is that you're siding with this wrong.
Kofi Annan
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Open markets offer the only realistic hope of pulling billions of people in developing countries out of abject poverty, while sustaining prosperity in the industrialized world.
Kofi Annan
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Children are our future and if we use them in battle, we are destroying the future. We must reclaim them, every one of them, one at a time.
Kofi Annan
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The international community... allows nearly 3 billion people - almost half of all humanity - to subsist on $2 or less a day in a world of unprecedented wealth.
Kofi Annan
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The global HIV/AIDS epidemic is an unprecedented crisis that requires an unprecedented response. In particular it requires solidarity - between the healthy and the sick, between rich and poor, and above all, between richer and poorer nations. We have 30 million orphans already. How many more do we have to get, to wake up?
Kofi Annan
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One of my biggest regrets was the fact that as an institution and an international community we could not stop the war in Iraq. That really was very difficult and very painful. Every fibre in my body felt it was wrong. I spoke to leaders, we spoke to people, we tried... we couldn't stop it... and we see the results.
Kofi Annan
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To build a more healthy, peaceful and equitable world the classrooms of the world have to be full of girls as well as boys.
Kofi Annan
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I spent my youth and my most formative years in Africa. I left Africa when I was about 20, 21, and when Mo says a great African, I was really moulded by my African experience, although I had the good fortune that by the time I was 24 I had studied and worked on three continents - Africa, the US, and Europe.
Kofi Annan
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We all make mistakes.
Kofi Annan
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HIV/AIDS has become much more than a health issue. HIV/AIDS is a development issue, it's a security issue.
Kofi Annan
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Most people forget that even in Iraq, by the time the air and no-fly zone was established, the air defence system had been removed through the first Gulf war. All of them had been neutralised.
Kofi Annan
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The report produced by my commission, the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security, in 2012 showed the corrosive impact of money in US politics, for example, which undermines the legitimacy of the democratic system in citizens' eyes. Such perceptions partly explain the rise of a phenomenon like the success of Donald Trump.
Kofi Annan
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Tony Blair is a very able politician he's perhaps one of the best of his generation. He made a major contribution in many areas, but in Iraq I believe he got it wrong. He got it wrong.
Kofi Annan
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We were all children once. And we all share the desire for the well-being of our children, which has always been and will continue to be the most universally cherished aspiration of humankind.
Kofi Annan
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The future belongs to you, but it can only belong to you if you participate and take charge
Kofi Annan
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Young people should be at the forefront of global change and innovation. Empowered, they can be key agents for development and peace. If, however, they are left on society's margins, all of us will be impoverished. Let us ensure that all young people have every opportunity to participate fully in the lives of their societies.
Kofi Annan