Ban Ki-moon famous quotes

Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Children #Sleep #Attacking

With her courage and determination, Malala has shown what terrorists fear most: a girl with a book.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Girl #Determination #Book

The current model is global suicide. We need a revolution. Revolutionary thinking. Revolutionary action. Natural resources are becoming more and more scarce.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Suicide #Business #Thinking

Planet Earth is our shared island, let us join forces to protect it
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Islands #Earth #Force

A deal must include an equitable global governance structure. All countries must have a voice in how resources are deployed and managed.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Country #Voice #Climate Change

We must unite. Violence against women cannot be tolerated, in any form, in any context, in any circumstance, by any political leader or by any government.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Government #Leader #Political

On this International Day, let us promise to make peace not just a priority, but a passion. Let us pledge to do more, wherever we are in whatever way we can, to make every day a day of peace.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Peace #Passion #Priorities

You are already leaders. Your ideas, your actions and your decisions make a difference. More than any other generation, you have a voice. Social networking is changing how we interact - and it can change our world. You are in touch with peers from around the world. You understand the power of instant communication. I appeal to you to use that power for the common good, the power of communication and the power of networking.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Communication #Voice #Differences

You have to work and think about how we can make this world a better place for all. This is what I'd really like to ask our young leaders. We will try as leaders of today to minimise the problems which we will hand over to you. But it is to you. You have to take ownership and leadership of tomorrow. For that to be possible, you have to strengthen your capacity and widen your vision as a global citizen.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Thinking #Hands #Leader

Sustainable development and climate change are two sides of the same coin
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Inspiring #Two Sides #Climate

THE WORLD is over-armed and peace is under-funded.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#World

Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth – these are one and the same fight.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Fighting #People #Growth

Let us acknowledge and celebrate what youth can do to build a safer, more just world. Let us strengthen our efforts to include young people in policies, programmes and decision-making processes that benefit their futures and ours.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#People #Effort #Decision

The longer we delay, the more we will pay.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Delay #Pay

I believe in a world of justice and human rights for all. A world where girls can grow up free of fear of abuse. A world where women are treated with the respect and dignity that is their right. A world where poverty is not acceptable. My dear young friends, you can make this your world.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Girl #Growing Up #Believe

Society's dependence on fossil fuels is jeopardising social and economic progress.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Progress #Fuel #Fossils

It is up to each and every one of us to raise our voice against crimes that deprive countless victims of their liberty, dignity and human rights. We have to work together to realize the equal rights promised to all by the United Nations Charter. And we must collectively give meaning to the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that "no one shall be held in slavery or servitude"
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Voice #Rights #Giving

In a world of plenty, no one, not a single person, should go hungry. But almost 1 billion still do not have enough to eat. I want to see an end to hunger everywhere within my lifetime.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#World #Want #Hunger

We must turn the greatest collective challenge facing humankind today, climate change, into the greatest opportunity for common progress towards a sustainable future
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Opportunity #Challenges #Progress

Men must teach each other that real men do not violate or oppress women - and that a woman's place is not just in the home or the field, but in schools and offices and boardrooms.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Real #Home #School

There is one universal truth, applicable to all countries, cultures and communities: violence against women is never acceptable, never excusable, never tolerable.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Country #Community #Domestic Violence

Women must be full partners in development, so they can lift themselves and their communities out of poverty.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Community #Development #Poverty

You are here to step into the shoes of UN ambassadors - to draft resolutions, to plot strategy, to negotiate with your allies as well as your adversaries. Your goal may be to resolve a conflict, to cope with a natural disaster or to bring nations together on an issue like climate change. You may be playing a role, but you are also preparing for life. You are acting as global citizens.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Shoes #Issues #Goal

Given the nature and magnitude of the challenge, national action alone is insufficient. No nation can address this challenge on its own. No region can insulate itself from these climate changes. That is why we need to confront climate change within a global framework, one that guarantees the highest level of international cooperation.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Challenges #Levels #Addresses

Countries with more gender equality have better economic growth. Companies with more women leaders perform better. Peace agreements that include women are more durable. Parliaments with more women enact more legislation on key social issues such as health, education, anti-discrimination and child support. The evidence is clear: equality for women means progress for all,
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Country #Children #Mean

The taking of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict on another, even when backed by legal process... Where the death penalty persists, conditions for those awaiting execution are often horrifying, leading to aggravated suffering.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Suffering #Execution #Death Penalty

Every literate woman is a victory over poverty
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Victory #Poverty

Many say our world is at a tipping point. If we do not act together, if we do not act responsibly, if we do not act now, we risk slipping into a cycle of poverty, degradation, and despair.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Our World #Risk #Together

Between now and 2015, we must make sure that promises made become promises kept. The consequences of doing otherwise are profound: death, illness and despair, needless suffering, lost opportunities for millions upon millions of people.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Opportunity #People #Profound

Climate change has happened because of human behaviour, therefore it’s only natural it should be us, human beings, to address this issue. It may not be too late if we take decisive actions today.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Issues #Today #Climate

For too long we have tried to consume our way to prosperity. Look at the cost: polluted lands and oceans, climate change, growing scarcity of resources from food to land to fresh water, rampant inequality. We need to invent a new model; a model that offers growth and social inclusion... that is more respectful of the planet's finite resources. Nature has been kind to human beings, but we have not been kind to nature.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Ocean #Land #Long

Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women's empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Fighting #People #Water

We hold the future in our hands, together, we must ensure that our grandchildren will not have to ask why we failed to do the right thing, and let them suffer the consequences.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Grandchildren #Hands #Suffering

To measure the success of our societies, we should examine how well those with different abilities, including persons with autism, are integrated as full and valued members.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Autism #Different #Our Society

Migration is an expression of the human aspiration for dignity, safety and a better future. It is part of the social fabric, part of our very make-up as a human family
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Expression #Safety #Fabric

One of the main lessons I have learned during my five years as Secretary-General is that broad partnerships are the key to solving broad challenges. When governments, the United Nations, businesses, philanthropies and civil society work hand-in-hand, we can achieve great things.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Keys #Government #Hands

Our world is one of terrible contradictions. Plenty of food, but one billion people go hungry. Lavish lifestyles for a few, but poverty for too many others. Huge advances in medicine while mothers die every day in childbirth, and children die every day from drinking dirty water. Billions spent on weapons to kill people instead of keeping them safe.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Mother #Children #Dirty

Sustainable development is the pathway to the future we want for all. It offers a framework to generate economic growth, achieve social justice, exercise environmental stewardship and strengthen governance.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Exercise #Justice #Growth

Climate change does not respect border; it does not respect who you are - rich and poor, small and big. Therefore, this is what we call global challenges, which require global solidarity.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Challenges #Climate #Doe

One of my earliest memories is walking up a muddy road into the mountains. It was raining. Behind me, my village was burning. When there was school, it was under a tree. Then the United Nations came. They fed me, my family, my community.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Memories #Rain #School

The clear and present danger of climate change means we cannot burn our way to prosperity. We already rely too heavily on fossil fuels. We need to find a new, sustainable path to the future we want. We need a clean industrial revolution.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Mean #Fossils #Path

Climate change is destroying our path to sustainability. Ours is a world of looming challenges and increasingly limited resources. Sustainable development offers the best chance to adjust our course.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Challenges #Climate #Limited Resources

Achieving gender equality requires the engagement of women and men, girls and boys. It is everyones responsibility.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Girl #Responsibility #Boys

Terrorism is a significant threat to peace and security, prosperity and people.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#People #Prosperity #Terrorism

To those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual,or transgender-let me say- you are not alone. You're struggle, for the end to violence and discrimination, is a shared struggle. Today, I stand with you. And I call upon all countries and people, to stand with you too.A historic shift is underway. We must tackle the violence, decriminalize consensual same sex relationships and end discrimination. We must educate the public. I call on this council and people of conscience to make this happen.The time has come.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Country #Sex #Struggle

Extreme weather events continue to grow more frequent and intense in rich and poor countries alike, not only devastating lives, but also infrastructure, institutions, and budgets - an unholy brew which can create dangerous security vacuums.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Country #Weather #Vacuums

Nuclear terrorism is one of the most serious threats of our time. Even one such attack could inflict mass casualties and create immense suffering and unwanted change in the world forever. This prospect should compel all of us to act to prevent such a catastrophe.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Forever #Suffering #Nuclear

I call on men and boys everywhere to join us. Violence against women and girls will not be eradicated until all of us - men and boys - refuse to tolerate it.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Girl #Powerful #Boys

It is but a short step from hunger to starvation, from disease to death.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Disease #Poverty #Steps

The international community cannot accept that whole communities are marginalized because of the color of their skin. People of African descent are among those most affected by racism. Too often, they face denial of basic rights such as access to quality health services and education. Such fundamental wrongs have a long and terrible history.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Rights #Color #Long

For my generation, coming of age at the height of the Cold War, fear of nuclear winter seemed the leading existential threat on the horizon. But the danger posed by war to all humanity-and to our planet-is at least matched by climate change.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#War #Winter #Humanity

World military spending has now risen to over $1.2 trillion. This incredible sum represents 2.5 per cent of GDP (global gross domestic product). Even if 1 per cent of it were redirected towards development, the world would be much closer to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Military #Gdp #Goal

Now it is the least developed world who are not responsible for this climate change phenomenon that bore the brunt of climate change consequences so it is morally and politically correct that the developed world who made this climate change be responsible by providing financial support and technological support to these people.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#People #Support #Climate

Since [violence against women] is rooted in discrimination, impunity and complacency, we need to change attitudes and behavior - and we need to change laws and make sure they are enforced just like you are doing in Cuba.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Attitude #Law #Cuba

This is the moral challenge of our generation. Not only are the eyes of the world upon us. More important, succeeding generations depend on us. We cannot rob our children of their future.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Children #Eye #Our Generation

As many micro-credit schemes across the world can testify, investment in women is the best investment for the future.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Credit #World #Investment

We must follow the wisdom of the Brundtland Report. We must pursue development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Needs #Generations #Development

Our atmosphere can't tell the difference between emissions from an Asian factory, the exhaust from a North American SUV, or deforestation in South America or Africa
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Differences #America #Atmosphere

To achieve a Green Revolution, African farmers, must have access to land and security of tenure. They also need access to markets, technology and improved infrastructure.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Technology #Land #Revolution

Only through women’s full and equal participation in all areas of public and private life can we hope to achieve the sustainable, peaceful and just society promised in the United Nations Charter,
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Peaceful #Achieve #Equal

From the Balkans to Africa, from Asia to the Middle East, we have witnessed the weakening or absence of effective governance leading to the ravaging of human rights and the abandonment of longstanding humanitarian principles. We need competent and responsible states to meet the needs of "we the peoples" for whom the UN was created. And the world's peoples will not be fully served unless peace, development and human rights, the three pillars of the UN, are advanced together with equal vigour.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Rights #Together #Asia

Today, we have more than 110,000 men and women deployed in conflict zones around the world. They come from nearly 120 countries ... Thanks to their efforts, life-saving humanitarian assistance can be delivered and economic development can begin.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Country #Men #Effort

Millions of our fellow human beings continue to live as contemporary slaves, victims of abominable practices like human trafficking, forced labour and sexual exploitation. Countless children are forced to become soldiers, work in sweat shops or are sold by desperate families. Women are brutalized and traded like commodities. Entire households and villages labour under debt bondage.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Children #Practice #Sweat

We have all heard of the web of life. The way we live threatens to trap us in a web of death.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Way #Vegan #Traps

Let us take advantage of the opportunities presented by climate action and lay the foundations for a more prosperous and secure future for all
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Opportunity #Foundation #Climate

SUSTAINABLE PEACE IS POSSIBLE ONLY WITH WOMEN'S FULL PARTICIPATION, their perspectives, their leadership, their daily, equal presence wherever we seek to make and keep the peace.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Perspective #Equal #Participation

I call for the need of world leaders to address climate change and reduce the increasing risk of disasters- and world leaders must include mayors, townships and community leaders.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Community #Leader #Risk

The international community must offer short-term emergency measures to meet critical needs. But it must also make longer-term investments to promote food production and agricultural development, enhance food security and maintain and accelerate momentum towards the MDGs.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Mdgs #Community #Emergencies

On this International Day for the Abolition of Slavery let us reaffirm the inherent dignity of all men, women and children. And let us redouble our efforts to build societies in which slavery truly is a term for the history books.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Children #Book #Men

Millions of people in nearly 80 countries still live in fear of landmines and explosive remnants of war, which take an unacceptable toll on lives and limbs, and people's livelihoods
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Country #War #Acceptance

Universal ratification of the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict will establish an international moral consensus that no child should take part in hostilities or be involuntarily recruited and that former child soldiers should be assisted by their governments after a life of violence and distress.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Children #Government #Soldier

I strongly reject threats by any member state to destroy another or outrageous attempts to deny historical facts such as the Holocaust.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Israel #Holocaust #Historical

Three decades into this crisis, let us set our sights on achieving the "three zeros" zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Zero #Sight #Hiv

You have to take ownership and leadership of tomorrow. For that to be possible, you have to strengthen your capacity and widen your vision as a global citizen.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Vision #Citizens #Tomorrow

Now, more than ever, we need to connect the dots between climate, poverty, energy, food and water. These issues cannot be addressed in isolation.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Issues #Water #Energy

It has been said that knowledge is power. We need to strengthen education systems so that young people can benefit from cultural diversity, and not be victimized by those who exploit differences.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Differences #People #Diversity

Saving our planet requires you to be ambitious in what you aim, and, equally, in how hard you work to reach your goal.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Goal #Ambitious #Saving

Nuclear disarmament is the only sane path to a safer world.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Nuclear #World #Path

Gender equality and women's empowerment have been a top priority for me from day one as Secretary-General. And I am committed to making sure that the U.N. leads by example.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Priorities #Empowerment #Example

Climate change, demographics, water, food, energy, global health, women's empowerment - these issues are all intertwined. We cannot look at one strand in isolation. Instead, we must examine how these strands are woven together.
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Issues #Water #Empowerment

As the young leaders of tomorrow, you have the passion and energy and commitment to make a difference. What I'd like to really urge you do is to have a global vision. Go beyond your country; go beyond your national boundaries
-- Ban Ki-moon

#Country #Passion #Commitment