Antonio Guterres Quotes

The international community spends much more time and resources managing crises than preventing them. But TV cameras are seldom there when a conflict is avoided, so it is difficult for governments and international organizations to make prevention a priority.

We should not be focusing on quick solutions. The really important concern for policymakers everywhere is to prevent disasters - that is, the outlier events that matter the most.

When you’re reactive [in foreign policy] you often arrive on the scene too late.

The art of government is to deal with threats before they become overwhelming.

If terrorists attacked New York, Washington, or San Francisco with a weapon of mass destruction, the next day we will all be asking what steps we might have taken to prevent it. So the question is, “Why do we not take those steps now?”

We must solve problems before they occur, rather than scrambling to deal with crises after they erupt..

The core functions of government are negative—putting out fires, arresting criminals, settling disputes—and much more of what government does is the unromantic work of preventing bad situations from getting worse.

I'd say if you wanted to forestall bad events, the best thing to do is anticipate them and try to correct them before they get close.

Diplomatic eminences often natter on about preventive action, making the obvious point that it's better to cure festering ills before they metastasize into something much worse.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure understated.

If I hear something's not quite going right, then I'm there quicker than if I hear something's going wrong.

It's a conversation that nobody really likes to have, and it seems that we never can get to a solution with it and something horrific happens. We all stand back and say, "How could we let that happen?" and then it goes away and we move on.

There is no doubt that the time to act is now. It is now that timely action can avert disaster. It is now that with foresight and will such action can be taken without disturbing the essence of our way of life, by adjusting behaviour not altering it entirely.

Our top focus - protecting our Nation - must go beyond homeland preparedness; America will only be secure if we deal with threats before they happen, not just after they happen.

When you have an asteroid threatening Earth, it's uncertain where it's going to hit until the last minute; the decision to take action has to be coordinated by the international community.

Whether the task is fixing health care, upgrading K-12 education, bolstering national security, or a host of other missions, the U.S. is better at patching problems than fixing them.

Some think that by preparing to deal with crises you make them more likely. I think the wiser judgment is the contrary. In this area at least, if you want peace or stability, it's better to prepare for war or instability.

As part of our renewal - we need to fight problems, not just wait for them to take place.

People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about it, not when it's around your neck.

Too often, a problem is allowed to fester until it reaches a crisis point... and the American people are left asking the question: what went wrong and why?

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

Direct threats require decisive action.

There isn't a fight that I'm in that I'm not asking the question, 'What could we have done to avoid this?' Or, 'What can we do to avoid this in the future in terms of the kinds of things that we see?'

I think it is not necessary at this time to put forth a grand vision such as an East Asian Community. What we must do before that is create scenarios for Japan's response in case of a serious territorial incident.

In responding to a terrorist attack, there are only two choices - take the fight to the enemy or wait until they hit you again. In my estimation, America chose the first.