Kofi Annan Quotes

Most people associate reading with laying on the beach. They don't see that it's crucial for a democracy!

Without education, you can’t have democracy.

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one — but no one at all — can tell you what to read and when and how.

Free media is very essential for the democratic process and... development.

What we need more than anything else is an informed populace. I believe people want to be informed.

In the age of information, ignorance is a choice.

Decision making in a democracy depends above all on knowledge and not just the intel available to presidents and policymakers.

Democracy is interactive... It's a constant job of information, education, explanation, listening, and interactive communication.

What can we put into the hands of people under oppressive regimes to help them? For me, a big part of it is information, knowledge - the ability to defeat propaganda by understanding it.

The great threat to the young and pure in heart is not what they read but what they don't read.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Reading builds the educated and informed electorate so vital to our democracy.

The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.

When people were illiterate, they had to elect the lawyer or the doctor or whoever had access to information and knowledge to represent them in government. But today the peasant has more information than the politician ...

The great thing about democracy is we're free to take in all this information and make up our own minds about what is truth.

No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect upwards, supporting free and good government.

A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both ... And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives.

Democracy requires breeding. These illiterate peasants certainly know less about running a country than I do.

We need to learn democracy. Everything takes time.

Most people in Iraq talk of democracy and don’t know what it is … Most do not know what Human Rights is. We need a lot of training… Time is critical.

The development of democracy is very much a matter of education and of progressing step by step.

I think that the failure of newspaper competition in a community is a very serious handicap to the dissemination of the knowledge that the citizens need to participate in a democracy.

A democracy depends on its people, the literate and the well read.

Education is important even beyond the bounds of the opportunities it gives to the individual; it is a crucial and basic requirement for ensuring effective democracy and human rights.

The Internet has done a wonderful thing for us. But democracy doesn't work unless people are well informed, and I don't know that we are. People just don't have the time.