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Young people must be included from birth. A society that cuts itself off from its youth severs its lifeline it is condemned to bleed to death.

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
Birth
Severs
Cutting
Lifeline
Youth
Lifelines
Society
Bleed
Death
Included
Young
Condemned
Must
Cuts
People
Citizenship

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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One has to have the strength of character to say the time has come to move on... unless you are a king.
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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.
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Education is, quite simply, peace-building by another name. It is the most effective form of defense spending there is.
Kofi Annan
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Let us work in partnerships between rich and poor to improve the opportunities of all human beings to build better lives.
Kofi Annan
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Let us, above all, be clear that, without a convincing program of debt relief to start the new millennium, our objective of halving world poverty by 2015 will be only a pipe dream.
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Achieving the MDGs is not optional it is an essential investment in a safer, more human and prosperous world
Kofi Annan
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It's not that easy to quit. When you look back in the American system it is very rare that people quit on issues of principle.
Kofi Annan
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To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.
Kofi Annan
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It is tragic that so few young people in Western democracies vote. They have forgotten that their ancestors fought for the right to choose and change their leaders. They don't realise that their votes are more important than their tweets or Facebook posts.
Kofi Annan
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In an era of global abundance, our world has the resources to reduce dramatically the massive divides that persist between rich and poor, if only those resources can be unleashed in the service of all peoples.
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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Normally when people resign they will organise their champagne farewell parties... and then they resurface somewhere.
Kofi Annan
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International law now grants rights to all human beings, not only to citizens.
Kofi Annan
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When so many lives are at risk, when so much killing is going on, when there's so much chaos and suffering, isn't the risk warranted? ... And if we don't take the risk of coming to the conference, what do we do? We let it continue?
Kofi Annan
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I've been around enough to realise that there are two things that once people have them, they don't want to give up, and it's extremely difficult to convince them to give up: one is privileges, and the other is subsidies.
Kofi Annan
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The Lord had the wonderful advantage of being able to work alone. Answering why he had not implemented organizational reforms after five months when 'God created the universe in seven day
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In countries where democracy is either non-existent or in development, on the other hand, citizens crave those freedoms. Maybe that is one lesson Western citizens can learn from those countries: treasure what you have. Use your rights and freedoms to effect the change you want.
Kofi Annan
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Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.
Kofi Annan