Susan Minot Quotes

We are regarded as a Third World country with First World living conditions.

One of the biggest challenges facing the globe is the gap that exists in the wealth and standards of living enjoyed by the world's nations.

When the World Economic Forum was established in 1971, the global population was four billion, of which 50% lived in poverty.

People in the U.K. don't imagine what it is to live in extreme poverty here in Colombia or anywhere in the so-called Third World.

I don't mind America becoming a Third World country. The weather is better in the Third World than it is where I live in New Hampshire. And household help will be much cheaper.

The whole world is set up so that for places like Switzerland to exist, that are crime-free and with the best care for everybody, you have to have places like Sudan, or Jamaica. But really, there's enough to share, when you check it. It's not that complicated, really. It's probably less thinking and more feeling that's required.

While a handful of countries and a small number of people are leading ample life, dozens of countries and billions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America are being left in absolute poverty.

Certainly I'll never be able to put myself in the situation that people growing up in the less developed countries are in. I've gotten a bit of a sense of it by being out there and meeting people and talking with them.

There's no question that how Johannesburg operates is what made me interested in the idea of wealth discrepancy. 'Elysium' could be a metaphor for just Jo'burg, but it's also a metaphor for the Third World and the First World. And in science fiction, separation of wealth is a really interesting idea to mess with.

The shock caused by the September 11 events has also lead to a thorough reflection on the existing disparity between rich and poor countries, on the misery of populations of the South.

I think growing up in South Africa, and then moving to Canada, I'm just genuinely interested in the difference between the First World and the Third World, immigration, and how the new, globalized world is beginning to operate. All of those things run through my mind a lot.

It's easy to sit in relative luxury and peace and pontificate on the subject of the Third World debts.

It's such a different spectrum of tragedies when you talk to people in developing countries.

Nobody in America lives at the survival level, Most people in the world would love to live the way poor Americans live.

Never forget that there are rich people in poor countries and poor people in rich countries.

The developing world is poor. It needs capital.

Poverty divide not only nations but societies within nations.

We see a small number of countries getting rich at the cost of impoverishment of a large number of other countries.

What separates developing countries from developed countries is as much a gap in knowledge as a gap in resources.

We are dealing with the greater challenges of globalisation. It is generating, in many cases, an increase in the levels of inequality in societies... that is undesirable.

What good is a high GDP if some, or even many, Americans are left behind?

The benefits of growth have not trickled down. Income inequalities have become one of the biggest global challenges, attracting growing attention not only in academic literature but also among policymakers globally.

The greatest single challenge facing our globalised world is to combat and eradicate its disparities.

You leave the States, and you see people have bigger problems than you, much worse problems than you.

The way corporate media likes to portray America is as a homogenous whole that high-five's each other at the Super Bowl. But what we have is a grotesque disparity between the rich and poor that is only getting wider.