Jeffrey Sachs Quotes

“The idea that UN commitments should be followed by action is indeed a radical one, especially for the United States, where wilful neglect of its own commitments is the rule.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“The longer you wait, the less fun. If you wait until the bitter end, the whole economy can be destroyed.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“The great leaders of the second world war alliance, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, understood the twin sides of destruction and salvation. Their war aims were not only to defeat fascism, but to create a world of shared prosperity.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

In Asia, a lot of successful economies that had been living on their own saving, decided to open up their financial markets to international capital in the early 1990s. So here were countries doing quite well, but they decided they'd borrow a bit more and do even better.

— Jeffrey Sachs

“We had a booming stock market in 1929 and then went into the world's greatest depression. We have a booming stock market in 1999. Will the bubble somehow burst, and then we enter depression? Well, some things are not different.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

In my view, there is an urgent need to communicate with the public and help to explain where there is consensus, and where are there doubts about the issues of sustainable development.

— Jeffrey Sachs

“We've taken the view that if the rest of the world would democratize and create market economies, that would spread the benefits of prosperity around the world, and that it would enhance our own prosperity, and our own stability and security, as well.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

It's not so unusual to run out of someone else's currency.

— Jeffrey Sachs

“Russia has gone through eight years of continuing economic pain.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“White House and State Department foreign-policy experts are overwhelmingly directed towards military and diplomatic issues, not development issues.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“If we did go into a recession, something that's always possible for the U.S. or Europe, we could lower interest rates and expand the money supply without worrying about the price of gold.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“Globalization was a deep trend pushed by technology and right ideas, as much as anything else.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“The essence of Africa's crisis is fundamentally its extreme poverty.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“The runs started in Thailand after the IMF intervened in such a dramatic way. Then the IMF came to Indonesia.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“We were proposing, in a sense, that the rest of the world be made safe for American ideas, as they adopted intellectual property rights that gave patent protection to our very innovative economy.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“Roosevelt talked not only about Freedom from Fear, but also Freedom from Want.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“I think the IMF helped to detonate the Indonesian crisis.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

Devaluations are never easy.

— Jeffrey Sachs

“Let's start fresh with Russia on some real help and some real reform.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“In the early 1990s, when a lot of the developing world opened up to international capital flows ... they ended up in very good long-term projects, but projects that weren't going to pay off for five or 10 or 20 years.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“Senior development specialists in the Treasury can be counted on one hand. America's government is not even aware of the gap between its commitments and action, because almost nobody in authority understands the actions that would be needed to meet the commitments.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

The truth of good economic doctoring is to know the general principles, and to really know the specifics. To understand the context, and also, to understand that an economy may need some tender loving care, not just the so-called hard truths, if it's going to get by.

— Jeffrey Sachs

“There's a lot of strength in the U.S., but there's a lot of froth also. The froth will blow off. We're going to have to face up to some realities that we're not fully facing up to right now.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“We, being the Western world, wouldn't let Russia off the hook on debt. So there were demands on debt servicing in the early days until they ran out of reserves. There was no real aid program, just a fictional aid program.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“The basic idea was that if a country would put its economy as an integrated piece of the world system, that it would benefit from that with economic growth. I concur with that basic view.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“Despite a decade of criticism and budget cuts, the specialised UN agencies have far more expertise and hands-on experience than any other organisations in the world.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

Unfortunately, the real focus in this country has not been on the rest of the world. It's been on our own issues and our own problems. Fair enough. But it means that our simple hopes that everything will just work out abroad aren't really coming to pass.

— Jeffrey Sachs

“The Russian drama began at the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union mercifully ended. Russia and 14 other new countries emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Every one of those 15 new states faced a profound historical, economic, financial, social and political challenge.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

We're going to have to forgive a great deal of the Soviet era debt. There's no question about that. Let's face up to that. We're going to have to put in money if Russia is really going to consolidate a democracy.

— Jeffrey Sachs

“Let the future say of our generation that we sent forth mighty currents of hope and that we worked together to heal the world.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

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.

— Jeffrey Sachs

“Obama is already setting a new historic course by reorienting the economy from private consumption to public investments ... free-market pundits bemoan the evident intention of Obama and team to 'tell us what kind of car to drive'. Yet that is exactly what they intend to do ... and rightly so. Free-market ideology is an anachronism in an era of climate change.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

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

— Jeffrey Sachs

“Every morning our newspapers could read, 'More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty.' How? The poor die in hospital wards that lack drugs, in villages that lack antimalarial bed nets, in houses that lack safe drinking water. They die namelessly, without public comment. Sadly, sad stories rarely get written.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

At the most basic level, the key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development.

— Jeffrey Sachs

“Extreme poverty is the best breeding ground on earth for disease, political instability, and terrorism.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

Business often does a good job supporting communities: the arts, universities, and scientific enterprises ... But that philosophy has rarely reached poor countries. Even businesses that are enlightened in their home bases see Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia as places to exploit natural resources or use cheap labor.

— Jeffrey Sachs

“It's quite possible to arrive in the year 2030 where people are no longer dying of poverty. We could actually help lead a global end-not a reduction, but an end-to absolute poverty ... I have always found that a committed, powerful group of leaders, can make a huge difference.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“Our interconnectedness on the planet is the dominating truth of the 21st century. One stark result is that the world's poor live, and especially die, with the awareness that the United States is doing little to mobilise the weapons of mass salvation that could offer them survival, dignity and eventually the escape from poverty.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“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.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“This is our greatest challenge: learning to live in a crowded and interconnected world that is creating unprecedented pressures on human society and on the physical environment.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“The aspiration of society is the flourishing of its members, this report gives evidence on how to achieve societal well?being. It's not by money alone, but also by fairness, honesty, trust and good health.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“The idea that the UN system could provide real leadership on the great development challenges will strain credulity in some quarters.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“The time has come to end this charade. The debts are unaffordable. If they won't cancel the debts I would suggest obstruction; you do it yourselves. Africa should say: 'thank you very much but we need this money to meet the needs of children who are dying right now so we will put the debt servicing payments into urgent social investment in health, education, drinking water, control of AIDS and other needs.'”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“The defining challenge of the 21st century will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

Soil mapping is one of the pillars to the challenge of sustainable development

— Jeffrey Sachs

We are not at war (except with our own demons).

— Jeffrey Sachs

“It's the American leadership that has not played the role it should be playing and that leaders in other countries have been playing.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

“I believe myself that there's a great deal more interest and engagement among Americans than our politicians recognize.”

— Jeffrey Sachs

It's not an accident that the U.S. ranks lowest of all major donor countries in the world - that is the share of our income that goes to development aid. Americans will ask whether, because were so generous privately, that makes up the difference. But it doesn't. We still rank far below other countries.

— Jeffrey Sachs