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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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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
Belong
Future
Take
Participate
Charge
Belongs

More quotes by 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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The number one goal in resolving a conflict is to make sure both sides maintain their self-esteem. You don't hit a man on the head when you've got your fingers between his teeth.
Kofi Annan
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Education is a human right with immense power to transform
Kofi Annan
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These divisions in the international community - the Syrians bear quite a lot of the blame, but we have enabled it by the divisions between us.
Kofi Annan
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We had a rule in the school that when you're punished, you carry out the punishment and then complain, which I felt was absolutely unfair: if I'd done it, what was the point of complaining?
Kofi Annan
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In some ways, the challenges are even more daunting than they were at the peak of the cold war. Not only do we continue to face grave nuclear threats, but those threats are being compounded by new weapons developments, new violence within States and new challenges to the rule of law.
Kofi Annan
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For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right.
Kofi Annan
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Invite politicians to dinner and let them tell the world how delicious it is. . . . They will proudly go around and say, 'I ate crickets, I ate locusts, and they were delicious.'
Kofi Annan
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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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If you have a problem and you can't find a solution, you meet again tomorrow and you keep talking until you find a solution. You can disagree with behavior or a particular position, but you do not resort to calling an opponent worthless.
Kofi Annan
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When the US withdrew their troops from Somalia, I recall making a comment that [in] the way the peacekeepers had been withdrawn from Somalia, the impression had been given that the easiest way to unravel a peacekeeping operation is to kill a few soldiers.
Kofi Annan
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Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.
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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You can do a lot with diplomacy, but with diplomacy backed up by force you can get a lot more done.
Kofi Annan
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Reform is a process, and not an event.
Kofi Annan
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The future of peace and prosperity that we seek for all the world's peoples needs a foundation of tolerance, security, equality and justice.
Kofi Annan
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...there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women.
Kofi Annan
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The United Nations has long recognised that the imagination, ideals and energies of young men and women are vital for the continuing development of the societies in which they live. And since its inception in 1948, AIESEC has contributed to this development by serving as an agent of positive change trough education and cultural exchange.
Kofi Annan
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Ameen Rihani, one of the earliest Arab Americans, devoted his life to bringing the East and the West together. We are not of the East or the West, he wrote. No boundaries exist in our breast: We are free.
Kofi Annan
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One has to learn from history. Quite frankly, it is almost impossible to have a sense of vision without a sense of history. If history is learned, then it doesn't have to repeat itself over generations.
Kofi Annan