We need to think of the future and the planet we are going to leave to our children and their children.
Interpretation
We must consider the environmental legacy we leave for future generations.
Kofi Annan's quote emphasizes the importance of sustainability and environmental stewardship. It reminds us that the decisions we make today regarding our planet will have lasting impacts on future generations, compelling us to act responsibly and think critically about the state of our environment as we plan for the future.
In practice
During a conference on climate change, one might use this quote to emphasize the responsibility of leaders in environmental policies.
If you have a problem and you can't find a solution, you meet again tomorrow and you keep talking until you find a solution. You can disagree with behavior or a particular position, but you do not resort to calling an opponent worthless.
Let us remember the large numbers of citizens who, day in and day out, through acts of volunteerism large and small, bring hope to so many of the world's disadvantaged. Let us ensure that this wonderful resource, available in abundance to every nation, is recognized and supported as it works towards a more prosperous and peaceful world.
We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.
The global HIV/AIDS epidemic is an unprecedented crisis that requires an unprecedented response. In particular it requires solidarity - between the healthy and the sick, between rich and poor, and above all, between richer and poorer nations. We have 30 million orphans already. How many more do we have to get, to wake up?
People of different religions and cultures live side by side in almost every part of the world, and most of us have overlapping identities which unite us with very different groups. We can love what we are, without hating what β and who β we are not. We can thrive in our own tradition, even as we learn from others, and come to respect their teachings.
Democracy is, in essence, a form of non-violent conflict management. If war is the worst enemy of development, healthy and balanced development is the best form of conflict prevention.
Our kinship with Earth must be maintained; otherwise, we will find ourselves trapped in the center of our own paved-over souls with no way out.
There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.
I was at Earth Summit in Rio 20 years ago... I was only 12 years old. And when I was speaking to the U.N. I was fighting for my future.
Why is it so easy to save the banks - but so hard to save the biosphere?
Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.
The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment; they express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.
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