Kailash Satyarthi Quotes

Latin American countries have lavished money on its armies when they should have been lavishing it on their children.

We talk of globalization, and how much money is needed for the education of children in the world, their liberation and rehabilitation just $9 billion which is four days of military expense. Just four days. Nine billion dollars is nothing. But what Americans spent on ice cream just 20 percent of this. One fifth of what you spend on ice creams could bring the children out of the clutches of their masters and put them to school.

The armed beggary of the nation.

There's something troubling about a condition in which one country alone, which has roughly 5 percent of the world's population, spends more than 50 percent of the world's defense budgets. There's something weird about it.

I cannot but say a word and look my disapproval when I hear that my country is spending millions for war and war engines-more, I have heard, than twice as much as the entire public school system costs the nation.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

Global military spending levels constitute an unconscionable use of resources and remain at an all-time high, reaching a total of USD 1.75 trillion in 2012, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

I'm very skeptical of the amount of money that goes into military expenditure, not just in the poor countries [but] also in the rich. I think it's one of the most massive wastes in the world, but education is [at the] other end. It's the bearer of the greatest fruits that mankind has ever known.

Militarism is in direct competition with people's needs for food, health care, and environmental protection.

Did you know that every two hours the nations of this world spend as much on armaments as they spend on the children of this world every year?

Title I dollars are well spent. They are really making a difference in the education of students.

It's not easy for the average family to ensure that their child receives a quality education. And the federal government is not making it any easier.

When you go somewhere like Kenya and you see how the children don't have pencils and pens, and all of these things are considered luxuries, and what a privilege they see education as and how hungry they are to learn, I wanted to give my brother and sister long lectures. That definitely stayed with me.

... when you have a draft you're more likely to go to war than if you have to pay for a volunteer army. A draft lowers the cost for the wealthy because the people who are important don't have their children going off and they're also not paying as much in taxes.

The possession of highly developed armed forces by small nations is disastrous in all its consequences.

We can cut the Defense Department budget because we’ve got bombs running out of our ears.

I am going to use every rostrum and every forum and every searchlight that I can to tell the people of the country and their elected representatives that we can no longer afford overcrowded classrooms and half-day sessions. We just must not, we just cannot afford the great waste that comes from the neglect of a single child.

Everyone runs on an education platform. We have Education Presidents and Education Governors and Education Dog Catchers, but the dollars never match the rhetoric.

That there be equal educational opportunities for all and in all the States, and that public school expenditure be the same for Negro and white child.

In our town meetings, and in our school district meetings, wealthy and substantial men oppose the grant of $15 to a school library, and of $30 for both library and apparatus; while at West Point they spend $50 in a single lesson at target firing, and the government keeps a hundred horses, and grooms and blacksmiths to take care of them, as an indispensable part of the apparatus of the academy. The pupils of our Normal schools, who are preparing to become teachers, must maintain themselves; the cadets at the academy receive $28 a month, during their entire term, as a compensation for being educated at the public expense.

… war is a matter not so much of arms as of money

Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

Something's very wrong with a nation that would rather spend money on war than take care of its children.

Chinese military spending is carefully monitored by the United States.

Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily, and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society.