KOFI ANNAN

It has been said that arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity.

Business, labor and civil society organizations have skills and resources that are vital in helping to build a more robust global community.

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

What governments and people don't realise is that sometimes the collective interest - the international interest - is also the national interest.

The United Nations, whose membership comprises almost all the states in the world, is founded on the principle of the equal worth of every human being.

There is no development strategy more beneficial to society as a whole - women and men alike - than the one which involves women as central players.

Iraq has a new opportunity to comply with all these relevant resolutions of the Security Council.

The question is the morning after. What sort of Iraq do we wake up to after the bombing? What happens in the region? What impact could it have? These are questions leaders I have spoken to have posed.

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

Above all else, we need a reaffirmation of political commitment at the highest levels to reducing the dangers that arise both from existing nuclear weapons and from further proliferation.

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

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

We cannot wait for governments to do it all. Globalization operates on Internet time. Governments tend to be slow moving by nature, because they have to build political support for every step.

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.

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

We need to think of the future and the planet we are going to leave to our children and their children.

We have the means and the capacity to deal with our problems, if only we can find the political will.

In their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda.

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.

If we can come up with innovations and train young people to take on new jobs, and if we can switch to clean energy, I think we have the capacity to build this world not dependent on fossil-fuel. I think it will happen, and it won't destroy economy.

We must ensure that the global market is embedded in broadly shared values and practices that reflect global social needs, and that all the world's people share the benefits of globalization.

I don't share the view that the ICC is anti-African. The ICC is not putting Africa on trial. The ICC is fighting impunity and individuals who are accused of crimes.

Unfortunately, very few governments think about youth unemployment when they are drawing up their national plans.

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.

Time and again, when member states and the governments are faced with an insoluble problem, and they're under pressure to do something, that something usually ends up being referred to the U.N.