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If one is talking to a finance minister of a poor country, moral arguments tend not to get very far. But if you can argue that their country is going to grow 2 percent faster per year if they can just harness the power of the female half of the population more effectively, that is an argument they consider.

Nicholas D. Kristof

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Nicholas D. Kristof
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More quotes by Nicholas D. Kristof

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Compassion isn't a sign of weakness, but a mark of civilization.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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Look, we'll have to confront the pathologies of poverty at some point. We can deal with them cheaply at the front end, in infancy. Or we can wait and jail a troubled adolescent at the tail end. To some extent, we face a choice between investing in preschools or in prisons.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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Just a little help, a small security force, a bit of food, can save lives
Nicholas D. Kristof
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There seems to be this sense among even well-meaning Americans that Africa is this black hole of murder and mutilation that can never be fixed, no matter what aid is brought in.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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Conservatives, who have presumed that the key to preventing AIDS is abstinence-only education, and liberals, who have focused on distribution of condoms, should both note that the intervention that has tested most cost-effective in Africa is neither... Secular bleeding hearts and religious bleeding hearts will have to forge a common cause.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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The tide of history is turning women from beasts of burden and sexual playthings into full-fledged human beings.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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The way you get leaders to care about issues of conscience is to apply political pressure. It's less a question of persuading leaders directly and more trying to build a social movement that holds their feet to the fire.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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Sometimes I wish eastern Congo could suffer an earthquake or a tsunami, so that it might finally get the attention it needs. The barbaric civil war being waged here is the most lethal conflict since World War II and has claimed at least 30 times as many lives as the Haiti earthquake.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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One of the things that really got to me was talking to parents who had been burned out of their villages, had family members killed, and then when men showed up at the wells to get water, they were shot
Nicholas D. Kristof
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China was probably the worst place in the world to grow up female 100 years ago. There was foot binding, female infanticide, concubinage, and child marriage, and now it's one of the better places. So I really do feel that we're on the right side of history here.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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A few countries like Sri Lanka and Honduras have led the way in slashing maternal mortality.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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One thing the humanitarian world doesn't do well is marketing. As a journalist, I get pitched every day by companies that have new products. Meanwhile, you have issues like clean water, literacy for girls, female empowerment. People flinch at the idea of marketing these because marketing sounds like something only companies do.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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The greatest threat to extremism isn't drones firing missiles, but girls reading books.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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We all might ask ourselves why we tune in to these more trivial matters and tune out when it comes to Darfur
Nicholas D. Kristof
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Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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Solar power is one of the most hopeful technologies but still produces about 0.01 percent of U.S. electricity. The U.S. allocates just $159 million for solar research per year - about what we spend in Iraq every nine hours.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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Americans of faith should try as hard to save the lives of African women as the lives of unborn fetuses.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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Neither left nor right has focused adequately on maternal health
Nicholas D. Kristof
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One of the great failings of the American education system (in our view) is that young people can graduate from university without any understanding of poverty at home or abroad.
Nicholas D. Kristof