Above all else, we need a reaffirmation of political commitment at the highest levels to reducing the dangers that arise both from existing nuclear weapons and from further proliferation.
– Kofi Annan
Business, labor and civil society organizations have skills and resources that are vital in helping to build a more robust global community.
– Kofi Annan
Globalization is a fact of life. But I believe we have underestimated its fragility.
– Kofi Annan
I urge the Iraqi leadership for sake of its own people... to seize this opportunity and thereby begin to end the isolation and suffering of the Iraqi people.
– Kofi Annan
If the United Nations does not attempt to chart a course for the world's people in the first decades of the new millennium, who will?
– Kofi Annan
Iraq has a new opportunity to comply with all these relevant resolutions of the Security Council.
– Kofi Annan
It has been said that arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity.
– Kofi Annan
Many African leaders refuse to send their troops on peace keeping missions abroad because they probably need their armies to intimidate their own populations.
– Kofi Annan
More countries have understood that women's equality is a prerequisite for development.
– Kofi Annan
National markets are held together by shared values and confidence in certain minimum standards. But in the new global market, people do not yet have that confidence.
– Kofi Annan
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
The Lord had the wonderful advantage of being able to work alone.
– Kofi Annan
The question is the morning after. What sort of Iraq do we wake up to after the bombing? What happens in the region? What impact could it have? These are questions leaders I have spoken to have posed.
– Kofi Annan
We cannot wait for governments to do it all. Globalization operates on Internet time. Governments tend to be slow moving by nature, because they have to build political support for every step.
– Kofi Annan
We have the means and the capacity to deal with our problems, if only we can find the political will.
– Kofi Annan
We have to choose between a global market driven only by calculations of short-term profit, and one which has a human face.
– Kofi Annan
We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.
– Kofi Annan
We must ensure that the global market is embedded in broadly shared values and practices that reflect global social needs, and that all the world's people share the benefits of globalization.
– Kofi Annan
We need to think of the future and the planet we are going to leave to our children and their children.
– Kofi Annan
We need to keep hope alive and strive to do better.
– Kofi Annan
There is no development strategy more beneficial to society as a whole - women and men alike - than the one which involves women as central players.
– Kofi Annan
Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.
– Kofi Annan
In the 21st century, I believe the mission of the United Nations will be defined by a new, more profound awareness of the sanctity and dignity of every human life, regardless of race or religion.
– Kofi Annan
If one is going to err, one should err on the side of liberty and freedom.
– Kofi Annan
If information and knowledge are central to democracy, they are conditions for development.
– Kofi Annan
Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.
– Kofi Annan
Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development.