Kofi Annan Quotes

The world is too little aware of the waste of life, limb and land which anti-personnel landmines are causing among some of the poorest people on earth.

Millions of people in nearly 80 countries still live in fear of landmines and explosive remnants of war, which take an unacceptable toll on lives and limbs, and people's livelihoods

Every day women and children are killed and maimed by landmines long after wars are over.

Landmines are among the most barbaric weapons of war, because they continue to kill and maim innocent people long after the war itself has ended. Also, fear of them keeps people off the land, and thus prevents them from growing food.

Landmines distinguish themselves because once they have been sown, once the soldier walks away from the weapon, the landmine cannot tell the difference between a soldier or a civilian - a woman, a child, a grandmother going out to collect firewood to make the family meal.

It's hard to see how anyone can fail to care about innocent children and animals being blown up by landmines.

Officials of governments that use or produce landmines should be forced to see the reality of how landmines hurt people and make them suffer, because this would surely make them stop.

Thinking through how to make sure we're bringing incredible toys and experiences and that to our girls and our boys at some point is really important for this country for the world in general.

I want to rebuild America.

Haiti is 10.4-million people, of whom 35 per cent are children under 15. The country has always had great potential - and this is still the case. Our ill fortune has long been a matter of bad governance. And now things have changed.

Even soldiers from the Vietnam War had said that when they were fighting in that war, the landmine was just one of any number of weapons to use in the fighting. It wasn't until they began to think about the aftermath and the legacy of landmines that they recognized the long-term, indiscriminate impact of the weapon.

Guns go home with the soldiers, but landmines are designed to kill - mindlessly, out of control, for years.

Landmines are different from other conventional weapons. When a war is over, the landmines stay in the ground and continue to kill - for decades.

In the past we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone. Such scenes would henceforth be avoided. Before entering the minefields, the children now wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.

The landmine cannot tell the difference between a soldier or a civilian - a woman, a child, a grandmother going out to collect firewood to make the family meal... once peace is declared the landmine does not recognize that peace. The landmine is eternally prepared to take victims.

Did the President order anyone to kill civilians, did he order the destruction, did he order supporting terrorism in his country? Of course not.

Patriotism, or the peculiar relation of an individual to his country, is like the family instinct. In the child it is a blind devotion; in the man in intelligent love. The patriot perceives the claim made upon his country by the circumstances and time of her growth and power, and how God is to be served by using those opportunities of helping mankind. Therefore his country's honor is dear to him as his own, and he would as soon lie and steal himself as assist or excuse his country in a crime.

War is not a computer-generated missile striking a digital map. War is the color of earth as it explodes in our faces, the sound of child pleading, the smell of smoke and fear. Women survivors of war are not the single image portrayed on the television screen, but the glue that holds families and countries together. Perhaps by understanding women, and the other side of war ... we will have more humility in our discussions of wars... perhaps it is time to listen to womens side of history.

I did not feel very patriotic. I did not feel proud of our country, seeing that we were bombing peasant villages, that we were not just hitting military targets, that children were being killed. We were terrorizing the North Vietnamese with our enormous Air Force. They had no Air Force at all. They were a little pitiful country and we were terrorizing them with our bombs. And no, I did not feel proud at all.

This kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise that’s at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try. We tell people - we tell our kids - that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, work hard and you can get into the middle class. We tell them that your children will have a chance to do even better than you do. That’s why immigrants from around the world historically have flocked to our shores.

He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safer for children to grow up in.

The devastation wreaked by landmines is not only horrendous but immoral

The greatest natural resource that any country can have is its children.

The difference between the child and the man lies chiefly in the unlimited confidence and buoyancy of youth.