Kofi Annan Quotes

Shaping the future is what drives me. Since I left politics, I'm very much interested in emerging markets.

Management is the gate through which social and economic and political change, indeed change in every direction, is diffused though society.

The embourgeoisement of China's proletariat may be the inevitable result of its industrialization, but 'inevitable' isn't the same as 'speedy.'

The rapid proliferation of cell phones in Afghanistan proves that anything that adds value to people's lives spreads like brushfire - and commerce is certainly a force that could add value for Afghanis.

The mobile industry changed Africa.

Entrepreneurs cannot be happy people until they have seen their visions become the new reality across all of society.

The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words, there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.

The main occupation of society has changed from fighting to business, from military to industrial life.

The merchant created the industrialist.

I tell you, Bono may have a point. South Africa needs a Walmart.

Innovation and commerce are as powerful tools for creating social progress as they are for driving technological advancement.

As economies have evolved, the nature of work has always changed.

What was a profitable business in one era can become a public utility and a recognized public good in the next.

The day after Donald Trump was elected, Chinese business leaders, including the heads of Baidu, stood up and gave a speech saying, 'Come to China and build your company now.' The cognitive dissonance of that was amazing for some of us to think we might be losing our leadership role in building companies.

As industrial technology advances and enlarges, and in the process assumes greater social, economic, and political force, it carries people away from where they belong by history, culture, deeds, association, and affection.

Political change and academic change and intellectual change are obviously crucial, but they don't necessarily change society. They can change a particular class and give everybody in that class great arguments, but that doesn't necessarily translate into the body of the culture.

I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful - but also very harmful to our society.

As I have been arguing for a long time now, there is a real need not simply for a political economy of wealth but also for a political economy of speed.

I think we've seen at least the beginnings of rather significant social and economic change in the Muslim world, which I think will in due course lead to more political change.

One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change.

When new technologies impose themselves on societies long habituated to older technologies, anxieties of all kinds result.

Spin-off technologies are changing the culture. Even if you don't become an engineer you could be a poet, a journalist, a lawyer, but you will be thinking innovation and your actions within society, who you vote for, what you value, all become a participant in an innovation economy.

One of the paradoxes of globalization is that, in the developing world, we've seen massive reductions in property.

For as long as I am alive, I will not rest in my desire to lead my people out of an abyss of corruption and poverty.

One of the things I like to do is people's hearts are on their sleeve, whether it's a good or a bad heart. And I think that's one of the things living in a world with Powers would do: it's too theatrical not to express yourself constantly. It would change them socially and sexually, everything would be altered because of superheroes.