I know what it means to go to the stream to fetch water... what it means when people are poor and don't have enough to eat. It's not enough to say you know about poverty. You have to live it.
Interpretation
Experiencing poverty firsthand is essential to truly understanding it.
This quote emphasizes that theoretical knowledge about poverty is insufficient; one must experience it personally to grasp its full impact. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala stresses the importance of empathy and understanding in addressing social issues, as those who have lived through hardships can offer valuable perspectives on effective solutions.
In practice
During a speech about social justice, one might say, 'As Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala points out, understanding poverty requires living it, not just reading about it.'
When I became finance minister, they called me Okonjo-Wahala - or 'Trouble Woman.' It means 'I give you hell.' But I don't care what names they call me. I'm a fighter; I'm very focused on what I'm doing, and relentless in what I want to achieve, almost to a fault. If you get in my way, you get kicked.
I'm trying to tell you that there's a new wave on the continent. A new wave of openness and democratization in which, since 2000, more than two-thirds of African countries have had multi-party democratic elections. Not all of them have been perfect, or will be, but the trend is very clear.
The best way to help Africans today is to help them to stand on their own feet. And the best way to do that is by helping create jobs.
When you save the life of anyone, a farmer, a teacher, a mother, they are contributing productively into the economy.
Investing in women is smart economics, and investing in girls, catching them upstream, is even smarter economics.
I felt Nigeria didn't have to succumb to the image of being a corrupt country; we didn't have to let the economy stagnate.
There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
Just because something didn't work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.
This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life.
Hope is practiced through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness.
Someone who is elated with wine speaks the truth on all subjects, even without meaning to. In the same way, anyone who is inebriated with the spirit of penitence will never be able to tell lies.
Watch your thoughts. Every thought accepted as true is sent by your brain to your solar plexus - your abdominal brain - and is brought into your world as a reality.
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