Jim Yong Kim Quotes

#1. If I care about poverty, I have to care a lot about investments in the private sector. The private sector creates the vast majority of jobs in the world, and social protection only goes so far.

Jim Yong Kim

#2. If you look at three diseases, the three major killers, HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, the only disease for which we have really good drugs is HIV. And it's very simple: because there's a market in the United States and Europe.

Jim Yong Kim

#3. I like to change people's sense of what's possible.

Jim Yong Kim

#4. There will be water and food fights everywhere.

Jim Yong Kim

#5. The water issue is critically related to climate change. People say that carbon is the currency of climate change. Water is the teeth.

Jim Yong Kim

#6. Why is it that when it comes to our most cherished social goal [health care], we not only tolerate poor execution, sometimes we even celebrate it?

Jim Yong Kim

#7. I've always been engaged in social protection programmes.

Jim Yong Kim

#8. Today there are a lot places where people say they're just hopeless. If I can come from a hopeless country, get an education, become a hyphenated American and become president of the World Bank, it's my moral duty to make sure that every single person on the planet has that opportunity.

Jim Yong Kim

#9. What we have found is that because of smartphones and access to media, and because everybody knows how everyone else lives, you have no idea where the next huge social movement is going to erupt.

Jim Yong Kim

#10. Hope is a moral choice.

Jim Yong Kim

#11. What happens when corn and wheat prices rise is that we see real increases in malnutrition and under-nutrition. And when children are malnourished, their brain development actually slows down and is affected. So this is not just a short-term impact.

Jim Yong Kim

#12. My father came by himself across the North Korean border when he was seventeen. And hasn't seen his brothers or sisters or parents since then. And he died some time ago, but never saw any of his relatives. My mother was a refugee in war-torn Korea.

Jim Yong Kim

#13. Institutionalized discrimination is bad for people and for societies. Widespread discrimination is also bad for economies. There is clear evidence that when societies enact laws that prevent productive people from fully participating in the workforce, economies suffer.

Jim Yong Kim

#14. I've spent my entire life working to invest in human beings and human communities, to help them move down the path of economic development.

Jim Yong Kim

#15. Look at the problem of drug-resistant TB in the world. Look at HIV in the world. What's going to be required for everybody in the long run is the ability to do complex health interventions in poor settings.

Jim Yong Kim

#16. The relationship between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala fundamentally changes with meditation.

Jim Yong Kim

#17. Economic development and poverty alleviation are so complicated that I don't think there's a single background or a single discipline that is sufficient to tackle these great human problems.

Jim Yong Kim

#18. We have to find climate-friendly ways of encouraging economic growth. The good news is we think they exist

Jim Yong Kim

#19. When you're working on development issues, optimism is not always based on rational analysis, often it is a moral choice.

Jim Yong Kim

#20. Haiti's economy cannot be built by and benefit just a privileged few. It must be built by and benefit all Haitians.

Jim Yong Kim

#21. We will never end poverty if we don't tackle climate change.

Jim Yong Kim

#22. Carbon is the currency of how you measure climate change, but water will be the teeth.

Jim Yong Kim

#23. I feel like I'm calmer, I'm kinder, I'm more patient the more I do my own meditation.

Jim Yong Kim

#24. I want to eradicate poverty. I think that there's a tremendous passion for that inside the World Bank.

Jim Yong Kim

#25. One of the things I had to really work on is, when you're the leader of an organization, people look at the expression on your face. Your mood has a lot to do with how people think the whole organization is doing.

Jim Yong Kim

#26. We need to have a plan equal to the challenge.

Jim Yong Kim

#27. World Bank is a bank that's focused on economic development and poverty alleviation.

Jim Yong Kim

#28. Water and sanitation has not had the same kind of champion that global health, and even education, have had.

Jim Yong Kim

#29. We are watching things happen with one degree changes in ocean temperature that we thought wouldn't happen until there were two or three degree changes in ocean temperature. These are facts.

Jim Yong Kim

#30. Ending poverty and ensuring sustainability are the defining challenges of our time. Energy is central to both of them.

Jim Yong Kim

#31. A lot of young people don't think they can make a difference. That's really what I am at Dartmouth to do. I'm there to tell the young people, 'Look, a few committed souls can change the world.'

Jim Yong Kim

#32. Unless you invest in people, you are not going to see growth in the long term, the medium term, and maybe even the short term.

Jim Yong Kim

#33. One of the lessons of leadership worth emphasizing is that you want to get to know other great leaders and take their advice. At some point in your development, it's only people who've been in the seat of having to be leaders who can help you in a deep way.

Jim Yong Kim

#34. If we do not act to curb climate change immediately, we will leave our children and grandchildren an unrecognizable planetIt is the poor, those least responsible for climate change and least able to afford adaptation, who would suffer the most.

Jim Yong Kim

#35. In my own view, the life expectancy of Native Americans in the United States is one of the really great moral crises that we face.

Jim Yong Kim

#36. Social media has changed the world forever. We're not going to go backwards. People are not going to accept being poor, accept being excluded anymore.

Jim Yong Kim

#37. Many people could benefit from meditation.

Jim Yong Kim