I used to tell the story about as a young man in high school one of the professors came in and put a broad white sheet on the board with a dot in the right hand corner and said, "Boys, what do you see?" And we all shouted, a black dot. He stood back and said, "not a single one of you saw the broad white sheet, you all saw the black dot." He went on to tell us to focus on the broader picture, don't focus on the negative.
Kofi AnnanOne has to learn from history. Quite frankly, it is almost impossible to have a sense of vision without a sense of history. If history is learned, then it doesn't have to repeat itself over generations.
Kofi AnnanWhether our task is fighting poverty, stemming the spread of disease or saving innocent lives from mass murder, we have seen that we cannot succeed without the leadership of the strong and the engagement of all.
Kofi AnnanIt is true that the principle of national citizenship, associated with rights, and the control of a country's borders are two key aspects of modern 'sovereign' nation states as they emerged in the Westphalian order. But there has been much progress since 1648.
Kofi AnnanIn all these cases, part of the reasons for failure perhaps was not analyzing and assessing the true nature of the crisis, the resources that would be required, and exaggerated expectation of what the U.N. troops can do.
Kofi AnnanWe have seen recently, almost every major head of state goes to India and says, we believe India should be in the Council. They go back home and do nothing about it. But this cannot be sustained for long. If they want to keep the UN as a global forum where they discuss incidents and take some meaningful decisions, they should [reform].
Kofi Annan