Extreme poverty is the best breeding ground on earth for disease, political instability, and terrorism.
Jeffrey SachsRead
We need to defend the interests of those whom we've never met and never will.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the importance of advocating for the rights and well-being of people we may never encounter.
Jeffrey Sachs emphasizes the moral responsibility individuals and societies have to defend the interests of others, especially those who are distant or anonymous to us. This sentiment underscores the interconnectedness of humanity and the ethical obligation to promote justice and welfare beyond our immediate circle, urging us to consider the broader impact of our actions on the global community.
In practice
In a speech advocating for humanitarian aid, this quote can be used to emphasize the need to support global issues.
Extreme poverty is the best breeding ground on earth for disease, political instability, and terrorism.
All of the incessant debate about development assistance, and whether the rich are doing enough to help the poor, actually concerns less than 1% of rich world income. The effort required of the rich is indeed so slight that to do less is to announce brazenly to a large part of the world: 'You count for nothing.' We should not be surprised, then, if in later years the rich reap the whirlwind of that heartless response.
Soil mapping is one of the pillars to the challenge of sustainable development
The key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development. The ladder of development hovers overhead, and the poorest of the poor are stuck beneath it. They lack the minimum amount of capital necessary to get a foothold, and therefore need a boost up to the first rung.
Without restoring an ethos of social responsibility, there can be no meaningful and sustained economic recovery.
Our challenge, our generation's unique challenge, is learning to live peacefully and sustainably in an extraordinarily crowded world. Our planet is crowded to an unprecendented degree. It is bursting at the seams. It's bursting at the seams in human terms, in economic terms, and in ecological terms
I believe we are put here to improve civilisation.
The utterly fallacious idea at the heart of the pro-war argument is that it is the duty of the anti-war argument to provide an alternative to war. The onus is on them to explain just cause.
Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law.
The incomparable greatness of the religions of the East lies in their having been second to none in vibrating with the passion for unity. This note, which is essential to every form of mysticism, has even penetrated them so deeply that we find ourselves falling under a spell simply by uttering the names of their Gods.
It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers; but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.
As nations we should also commit afresh to righting past wrongs. In Australia we began this recently with the first Australians - the oldest continuing culture in human history. On behalf of the Australian Parliament, this year I offered an apology to indigenous Australians for the wrongs they had suffered in the past.
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