Paul Zane Pilzer Quotes

We believe that economics does not necessarily have to be a zero-sum game; it can be a win-win proposition for everyone involved so long as they have the tools in which to succeed.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed

International politics is no longer a zero-sum game but a multi-dimensional arena where cooperation and competition often occur simultaneously. Gone is the age of blood feuds. World leaders are expected to lead in turning threats into opportunities.

One of the great political and economic challenges of our time is figuring out the balance between wealth that benefits society and wealth that distorts.

If we lived within our means - by being prudent - the 7 billion people in the world could have everything they needed. Global politics should be moving in that direction. But we think as people and countries, not as a species.

Of course I am frustrated with regard to extreme poverty, to violence that never seems to cease.

The development agenda is not a straightforward one; it's a process with serious hurdles, but it's a path we've chosen to go down.

So to hope to be able to have peace, to be able to have justice and environmental balance, are consequences of our behavior, not just our intentions.

The old approach of sacrificing the needs of one group to benefit another just won't work.

An economic policy which does not consider the well-being of all will not serve the purposes of peace and the growth of well-being among the people of all nations.

We define poverty as a shortage of material goods, which justifies the production of more and more material goods. It does not occur to us that it might be more realistic to regard it as an aberrant situation in which more material goods are required than can actually be produced, for then the solution would be to create those socio-economic conditions in which less goods rather than more were required.

Nature is rich; but everywhere man, the heir of nature, is poor. Never in this happy country or elsewhere except in the Land of Miracle, where "they did all eat and were filled"-has there been enough of anything for the people. Never since time began have all the sons and daughters of men been all warm, and all filled, and all shod and roofed.

World peace must be based on world plenty.

Economic development must ... not be left to the sole judgment of a few men or groups, possessing excessive economic power, or of the political community alone, or of certain powerful nations

Our world faces many grave challenges: Widening conflicts and inequality. Extreme weather and deadly intolerance. Security threats - including nuclear weapons. We have the tools and wealth to overcome these challenges. All we need is the will.

Social struggles have been taking place throughout millennia, since human beings, by resorting to wars, were able to take hold of a surplus production to satisfy the essential needs of life.

I have to say that if our global alliances are going to be alliances with Hezbollah and Hamas and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela and Vladimir Putin's Russia, there is absolutely no chance of building a world-wide alliance that can deal with poverty and inequality and climate change and financial instability, and we've got to face up to that fact.

Budgets are moral documents. They reflect the values of any government and when you're compromising clean air, clean water, and lead, you're making a statement about communities you don't care about.

Even if the most ethical people were elected to high position and we ran out of resources, there would still be lying, cheating, stealing, and corruption. It is not ethical people that are needed but rather a way of intelligently managing the Earth's resources for everyone's well-being.

Imagine a safe city with all the affordable housing we need, a city that uses its resources to help lift the marginalized up and into stability. This is the Portland I imagine. This is the Portland I dream about every single day.

I dream ...of a world where we can commit our social resources to the development of human life and not to its destruction

If we could just stop building up armies and things like that, we would have all the money we need for wildlife and poverty.

My goal is for a cooperative world at peace, using its resources to build, not to destroy.

Poverty - the greatest cause of human suffering on the planet - is itself exacerbated by conflict, competition for resources, injustice, even the global downturn and climate change. Diseases like AIDS, TB and malaria cannot be tackled without adequate resources. So you see everything is connected. In order to address any major cause of human suffering, we have to work together across many fronts.

Usually, when you look around the world, people are killing each other, fighting over scarce resources.