Human Development Index Quotes

A country in which the people are not healthy physically and psychologically, are poorly educated and illiterate, will never rise to the peaks of world civilization.

Since when has Finland been a rotten place to live in?

The notion of 'world leadership' is a curiously archaic one. The very phrase is redolent of Kipling ballads and James Bondian adventures. What makes a country a world leader? Is it population, in which case India is on course to top the charts, overtaking China as the world's most populous country by 2034?

We shouldn't measure everything in terms of GDP figures or economics. There is something called quality of life.

The reports on human progress are beginning to come in, and some are a little discouraging.

In the rich countries the poor expect a quantity and quality of commodities beyond the dreams of Louis XIV, while many of the so-called developing countries enjoy much higher economic growth rates than those of industrialized countries at a similar stage of their own histories.

North Korea is not an undeveloped country; it is a country that has fallen out of the developed world.

The Gross National Product measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.

GNP measures neither our courage, our wisdom neither our compassion. It measures everything except what makes life worthwhile

Global poverty is falling faster today than at any time in human history.

Sure, we’re No. 1 in gross domestic product and military expenditures, but on a lot of measures of quality of life, the U.S. ranking is far lower.

G.D.P. is not a measure of how much value is produced for consumers. Everybody should recognize that G.D.P. is not a welfare metric.

If development was measured not by gross national product, but a society's success in meeting the basic needs of its people, Vietnam would have been a model. That was its real "threat." From the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 to 1972, primary and secondary school enrollment in the North increased sevenfold, from 700,000 to almost five million. In 1980, UNESCO estimated a literacy rate of 90 percent and school enrollment among the highest in Asia and throughout the Third World.

A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in ... and how many want out.

When the World Economic Forum was established in 1971, the global population was four billion, of which 50% lived in poverty.

The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined by the GDP.

As an anthropology major, I wanted to understand the cultural significance of poverty - why it exists and why some countries can rise above it while others can't.

Countries with higher incomes on average achieve better human development. I do not believe that growth alone will 'cure' poverty. But I do believe that growth is necessary.

Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on earth. According to the United Nations' Human Development Report (2005), they are also the healthiest, as indicated by life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate, and infant mortality. . . . Conversely, the fifty nations now ranked lowest in terms of the United Nations' human development index are unwaveringly religious.

No country has a perfect report card. While some countries have strong points in specific areas, they may have serious lacunae in other areas. For instance, some countries have made enormous progress on civil and political rights, but lag in the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights.

I should say many things. Mexico has been one of the losers of the 20th century. We tried many different alternatives to development and unfortunately we have 40 percent of the population poor; we have a per capita income that is extremely low.

Man does not live by GNP alone.

Russia's a small country. It's really poor. It has nothing other than oil and weapons sales.

While we have put an utmost emphasis on Gross Domestic Products (GDP) as a barometer for the overall economy until now, we have not paid much attention in detecting a level of social welfare. We, as a member of the society, must now take steps to create an index to indicate other critical elements to be focused on in order to restore reliability of world statistics.

We are regarded as a Third World country with First World living conditions.