Kofi Annan

“The skills you need to fight the colonial power and the skills you need to gain independence are not necessarily the same you need to run a country.”

“The Lord had the wonderful advantage of being able to work alone.”

“Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development.”

“Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.”

“If information and knowledge are central to democracy, they are conditions for development.”

“Open markets offer the only realistic hope of pulling billions of people in developing countries out of abject poverty, while sustaining prosperity in the industrialized world.”

“More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can master it only if we face it together. And that, my friends, is why we have the United Nations.”

“The Arab Spring reminds me a bit of the decolonisation process where one country gets independence, and everybody else wants it.”

“More countries have understood that women's equality is a prerequisite for development.”

“I urge the Iraqi leadership for sake of its own people... to seize this opportunity and thereby begin to end the isolation and suffering of the Iraqi people.”

“Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.”

“We need to keep hope alive and strive to do better.”

“If one is going to err, one should err on the side of liberty and freedom.”