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I think it's dangerous to be optimistic.

Nicholas D. Kristof

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Nicholas D. Kristof
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More quotes by Nicholas D. Kristof

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The intelligence community is so vast that more people have top secret clearance than live in Washington. The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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Usually people are very much focused on keeping their kids alive.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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A little bit of attention can go a long way.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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All of a sudden their husband's dead and maybe a child is dead and they have absolutely nothing - and they're heading through the desert at night.
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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Photographs are still being taken but aren't being shown. There's one of a skeleton bound at the wrists with pants still around its ankles if it was a woman, she was likely raped if it was a man, he was possibly castrated.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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It really is quite remarkable that Darfur has become a household name. I am gratified that's the case.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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The conflict in Darfur could escalate to where we're seeing 100,000 victims per month
Nicholas D. Kristof
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I have often tried to tell the story of a place through people there.
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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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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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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Guilt-tripping people does not work they tend to be turned off.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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We tie ourselves in knots when we act as if democracy is good for the United States and Israel but not for the Arab world. For far too long, we've treated the Arab world as just an oil field.
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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Compassion isn't a sign of weakness, but a mark of civilization.
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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I think when hundreds of thousands of lives are on the line, you might have to set aside some principles.
Nicholas D. Kristof
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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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Just a little help, a small security force, a bit of food, can save lives
Nicholas D. Kristof