Kofi Annan Quotes

He who serves a revolution ploughs a sea.

We are reinventing the world. We've set the ball spinning with little concern for where and how it's going to stop.

Events are moving so fast and what in one moment seems impossible, the next is happening. I'm sure historians will, in time, provide theories and analysis, but for now I think most of us simply want the tide stemmed.

We are going through a terrible crisis. We do not know exactly what is going to happen, but in our hearts the pendulum of the seismograph is already swinging.

There is a feeling that events are in the air; all that is unpredictable is their timing. Perhaps we shall see several more years of peace, but it is equally possible that overnight some tremendous upheaval will happen.

A revolution resembles the death of a fading star, an exhilarating Technicolor explosion that gives way not to an ordered new galaxy but to a nebula, a formless cloud of shifting energy.

How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?

The wind of revolutions is not tractable.

All great changes are preceded by chaos.

I think this is really a defining moment for the Arab world. The problem is, it is all going to be about blood, sweat and tears. In certain countries it may be just sweat, and in some countries sweat and tears, and in some countries, as you can see, a lot of blood. I think initial instability is something that we are all extremely nervous of.

Revolutions and their aftermaths, of course, are always fluid and fickle times, and the outcome is often perched on a knife's edge.

We live in a pretty bleak time. I feel that in the air. Everything is uncertain. Everything feels like its on the precipice of some major transformation, whether we like it or not.

The one thing we can all be sure about in politics is you are as well to expect the unexpected.

My childhood was colorfully anarchic and punctuated by a lot of change.

Our trust in the future has lost its innocence. We know now that anything can happen from one minute to the next. Politics, religion, economics, and the institutions of family and community all have become abruptly unsure.

So give me a turbulent world as opposed to a quiet world and I'll take the turbulent one.

Life is full of change and uncertainty. We know this. We experience it on a daily basis.

At some stage in most people's lives, things turn upside down, and nothing is as you expected it to be.

The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism.

The Twenties have this sort of attitude where you never know what's around the corner.

Life is nutty; anything can happen.

I think frankly when it comes to chaos you ain't seen nothing yet.

There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music.

The world is a dynamic mess of jiggling things.

All that is solid melts into air. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.