Kofi Annan Quotes

Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.

A constitutional democracy is in serious trouble if its citizenry does not have a certain degree of education and civic virtue.

Citizens are not born. They are raised.

... the even more fundamental task that lies before the leader of a democracy is to bring to the people the realization that true democracy is the effort of the people individually to carry their share of the burden of government.

Great Presidents are made and not born. They have to be pushed into greatness.

… democracy, as it exists and practically works in America, with all its threatening evils, supplies a training school for making first-class men. It is life's gymnasium..fit for freedom’s athletes… Whatever we do not attain, we at any rate attain the experiences of the fight, the hardening of the strong campaign, and throb with currents of attempt at least.

Essentially, social education is moral education, and moral education is preparation for citizenship... When Jefferson and others advocated public education, it was to prepare for citizenship in a new, constitutional, democratic society.

The true purpose of education is to prepare young men and women for effective citizenship in a free form of government.

Our culture is at a critical cusp - a time that requires that we define what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. Within our nation we need to foster a greater sense of collective responsibility.

Education in the understanding of citizenship is a short-term affair if we are honest and earnest.

Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues.

Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it.

We started a movement... to build character, citizenship and confidence in young people.

The goal, I think, of American education, for decades, and across many, many scholars, was basically to teach people broad lessons in how to live life, how to engage life, how to essentially be effective citizens and effective people.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.

I don't want to run for governor, but I don't think anyone should put public service out of the question because that's not what a good citizen does.

Mindsets, skills and leadership, experience and access, and critical consciousness - we need all four of these things for our students to be the leaders, people and citizens we want them to be.

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

Teach for America recruits top recent college grads, young professionals, people we believe are the U.S.'s most promising future leaders, and asks them to commit two years to teach in high-need urban and rural communities.

I think self-reliance and self-responsibility and self-accountability will help you as a parent, a teacher, as a citizen as a friend.

Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.

I have spent a lifetime watching kids make mistakes because they were not trained or well led or properly motivated to do well. I never faulted the kids; rather, I saw opportunity to train, to motivate, to improve leadership - not to punish the individual.

Here's to democracy. May we get the government we deserve.