Young people must be included from birth. A society that cuts itself off from its youth severs its lifeline; it is condemned to bleed to death.
Interpretation
Young people are essential to the future and must be embraced from an early age.
This quote emphasizes the critical importance of integrating young people into society right from their birth. Kofi Annan warns that a society that neglects or alienates its youth will ultimately suffer, as they represent the future and vitality of a community. Cutting off connections with the younger generation means losing creativity, energy, and the potential for progress, leading to a slow decline.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech at a youth conference to highlight the importance of engaging young people in community activities.
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.
The schools must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will.
Sleep is good, he said, And books are better.
Usually kids who are talented have the brashness to think they can do anything, but they don't often get the chance to see how close they can come.
Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools - intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it - this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life.
You use hypnosis not as a cure but as a means of establishing a favorable climate in which to learn.
I think it's a mistake to think, 'Am I going to write a young adult book, or do I desperately want to write a book for adults?' I think the better ambition is to try to write someone's favorite book, because those categorizations of adult, young adult, become kind of superfluous.
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