The Global Agenda 2013

Top ten quotes of the last day of Davos

Jan 26th, 2013

“There needs to be an anti-corruption stance from the start, otherwise corruption is in the system.”
-Huguette Labelle, Chair of Transparency International and Co-Chair of the Annual Meeting, in The Global Agenda 2013 

“The fiscal cliff is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Policy-makers in rich countries are like rabbits in the headlight.”
-Trevor Manuel, Minister of the National Planning Commission of South Africa, in The Global Economic Outlook

“Greece can take more time for fiscal consolidation, and so can some other countries. It shouldn’t be a fast pace.”
-Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, in The Global Economic Outlook

“There’s nothing to be scared of in open data. Unless you’re taking money where you shouldn’t be taking money.”
-Peter Corbett, CEO of iStrategyLabs in Citizen Power – Leading Connected Societies

“Financial markets don’t operate by the laws of physics. They don’t have a tendency to return to equilibrium.” 
-George Soros in An Insight, An Idea

“In the worst climate scenario, my kids will live in a world without coral reefs, with acid oceans and with wars fought over water.”
-Jim Yong Kim, President of The World Bank, in The Global Economic Outlook 

“Davos has been too optimistic: the underlying issue is jobs. There are 200 million people unemployed worldwide.”
-Frederico Curado, CEO of EMBRAER, Brazil, in The Global Agenda 2013 

“We will have financial crises on a fairly regular basis over the next 30 or 40 years. We’ve failed to learn the lessons of the last crisis.”
-Gordon Brown, former UK Prime Minister, in China’s Next Global Agenda

“When China becomes the biggest economy in the world, its per capita income will be only a quarter of America’s.”
-Larry Summers, Harvard University professor, in China’s Next Global Agenda

“Reform is not just a Chinese task: it is a global task.”
-John Zhao, CEO of Hony Capital, in China’s Next Global Agenda

Top quotes of Davos 2013

“Leave the office at 5.30, take Wednesday afternoon off, don’t fill in your timesheet… Dare the difference and deliver.”
-Christine LaGarde, Managing Director of the IMF, in Women in Economic Decision-making

“As a boy, I studied in the dirt. There was no classroom. Education made me what I am, it made my dream come true… I shared my message with refugee children: Don’t lose hope, study hard. I did it, you can do it too.”
-Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General, in The Global Education Imperative

“A hacker to me is someone creative who does wonderful things.”
-Tim Berners-Lee , inventor of the World Wide Web, in An Insight, An Idea

“The old regimes will not come back… If there is one very sacred term of the Arab Spring, it is dignity, and democracy is the best system to respond to the search for dignity.”
-Ahmet Davutoglou, Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, in Is Democracy Winning?

“Good teachers teach. Great teachers transform.”
-Queen Rania of Jordan in The Global Development Outlook

“When you have a single currency you move inexorably towards a banking union and forms of fiscal union, and that has huge implications for countries like the UK who are not in the Euro and are frankly never likely to join.”
-David Cameron, UK Prime Minister, in his Special Address

“Budget consolidation and economic growth are two sides of the same coin.”
-Angela Merkel in her Special Address 

“I am not the woman president of Harvard, I am the President of Harvard.”
-Drew Faust in Women in Economic Decision-making

“Africa’s story has been written by others; we need to own our problems and solutions and write our story.” 
-Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda