Nicholas Kristof Quotes

The fragility and powerlessness of the state in large swathes of Africa, and the uncivil nature of the forces that emerge to fill the gaps, give cause for concern. In places such as Sierra Leone or Liberia, where there is mass illiteracy and up to three-quarters of the women have been raped, what are the prospects for civil peace and reducing widespread violence?

I want people to know there is more to Somalia than looting and piracy.

We are unnecessarily wasting our precious resources in wars... if we must wage war, we have to do it on unemployment, disease, poverty, and backwardness.

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth. Security issue or no security issue, there would need to be a focus on it.

In Afghanistan, there is a plan to build democracy; hundreds of thousands of troops are protecting it. There is a plan to rebuild and reconstruct there. But many thousands of Americans die from violence and poverty every year and we don't have a plan for reconstruction at home.

If you followed the media you'd think that everybody in Africa was starving to death, and that's not the case; so it's important to engage with the other Africa.

If you want to help Africa, you should help them out of poverty, not try to build solar cells and windmills.

I have to try and uplift the standard of living for the people in Zambia. If I cannot do that, I will have failed.

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.

These vast lands [Africa, South America, Asia]... need only assistance from us to be civilized.

Poverty and ignorance, which beget terror, are not eradicated by firing artillery shells. Borders do not stop rockets, and barbed wire does not prevent terror.

One of the things I find extremely challenging about the continent of Africa is that when the immediate needs and the social needs of people are not met, that kills dreams, and it's all about survival.

Cooperation and collaboration among nations and countries can help in the process of development of promoting welfare as well as bringing peace and stability.

Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence.

The other aspect is that you become much more aware of the structural problems that pertain to that continent. You feel the need to act to try and solve them.

We're not going to cure terrorism and spread peace and goodwill in the Middle East by killing innocent people, or I'm not even saying our bullets and bombs are killing them. The occupation that they don't have food. They don't have clean water. They don't have electricity. They don't have medicine. They don't have doctors.

The first Parikrma school started in a slum where there were 70,000 people living below the poverty line. Our first school was on a rooftop of a building inside the slums, a second story building, the only second story building inside the slums. And that rooftop did not have any ceiling, only half a tin sheet. That was our first school.

Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence.

We all would like to see a brighter future for Haiti, and I hope this conference will serve to explore many views. Respect for human rights, freedom, and the rule of law must be established in the poorest nation in our hemisphere.

The Olympics brought a lot of development to Beijing, but I don't see that there have been any changes to human rights as a result of the Olympics.

Mexico has not achieved the advances that the population demands or deserves.

Being a doctor, lawyer in war-torn countries isn't easy when the infrastructure isn't there. The money, the food and education is not always accessible to achieve those dreams.

We must embark on a bold new program for ... the improvement and growth of undeveloped areas. More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery .... For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of these people.

Human progress lags most in societies in which illiteracy is highest, above all in Islamic countries and Africa.

The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce and the diffusion of education, then upon the labors of cabinets and foreign offices.