90+ Nicholas D. Kristof Quotes On Education, Advocacy And Reporting

Nicholas D. Kristof is an American journalist and opinion columnist for The New York Times. He is known for his reporting from around the world, often focusing on human rights issues, especially in developing countries. He has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for his work, in 1990 for his coverage of China and in 2006 for his reporting from Darfur. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Nicholas D. Kristof on education, life, leadership.

Top 10 Nicholas D. Kristof Quotes

1. A few countries like Sri Lanka and Honduras have led the way in slashing maternal mortality.
2. We all might ask ourselves why we tune in to these more trivial matters and tune out when it comes to Darfur
3. The news media's silence, particularly television news, is reprehensible. If we knew as much about Darfur as we do about Michael Jackson, we might be able to stop these things from continuing.
4. The conflict in Darfur could escalate to where we're seeing 100,000 victims per month
5. There are other issues I have felt more emotionally connected to, like China, where I lived and worked for some time. I was living there when Tiananmen Square erupted
6. While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren't actually angry at the president about inaction
7. It really is quite remarkable that Darfur has become a household name. I am gratified that's the case.
8. The north of the Central African Republic is now a war zone, with rival armed bands burning villages, kidnapping children, robbing travelers and killing people with impunity.
9. The greatest threat to extremism isn't drones firing missiles, but girls reading books.
10. You will be judged in years to come by how you responded to genocide on your watch.

Nicholas D. Kristof Short Quotes

• I think that [Donald] Trump is frankly a bigot. He has a racist history.
• You don't need to invade a place or install a new government to help bring about a positive change.
• It is better to inconsistently save some lives than to consistently save none.
• In the long struggle against sex trafficking, we finally have a breakthrough!
• Neither left nor right has focused adequately on maternal health
• Just a little help, a small security force, a bit of food, can save lives
• The world spends $40 billion a year on pet food.
• It's easy to keep issuing blame to Republicans or the president
• Once you've created a connection of empathy, rational arguments can play a supportive role.
• Write letters to your editors, write to your members of Congress, and write to your news stations.

Nicholas D. Kristof Quotes About Education

Look, we'll have to confront the pathologies of poverty at some point. We can deal with them cheaply at the front end, in infancy. Or we can wait and jail a troubled adolescent at the tail end. To some extent, we face a choice between investing in preschools or in prisons. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Our nearly century-long experiment in banning marijuana has failed as abysmally as Prohibition did... In contrast, legalizing and taxing marijuana would bring in substantial sums that could be used to pay for schools, libraries or early childhood education. — Nicholas D. Kristof

America's education system has become less a ladder of opportunity than a structure to transmit inequity from one generation to the next. — Nicholas D. Kristof

One of the great failings of the American education system (in our view) is that young people can graduate from university without any understanding of poverty at home or abroad. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Nicholas D. Kristof Famous Quotes And Sayings

If President Bush is serious about genocide, an immediate priority is to stop the cancer of Darfur from spreading further, which means working with France to shore up Chad and the Central African Republic. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Every year 3.1 million Indian children die before the age of 5, mostly from diseases of poverty like diarrhea. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Most of the villagers were hiding in the bush, where they were dying from bad water, malaria and malnutrition — Nicholas D. Kristof

Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries. — Nicholas D. Kristof

The U.N. Population Fund has a maternal health program in some Cameroon hospitals, but it doesn't operate in this region. It's difficult to expand, because President Bush has cut funding — Nicholas D. Kristof

There seems to be this sense among even well-meaning Americans that Africa is this black hole of murder and mutilation that can never be fixed, no matter what aid is brought in. — Nicholas D. Kristof

The way you get leaders to care about issues of conscience is to apply political pressure. It's less a question of persuading leaders directly and more trying to build a social movement that holds their feet to the fire. — Nicholas D. Kristof

We, as Americans, have won the lottery of life and the distinction between us and people living in Kalighat is not that we are smarter, not that we're harder working, not that we're more virtuous - it's that we're luckier. — Nicholas D. Kristof

There could be a powerful international women's rights movement if only philanthropists would donate as much to real women as to paintings and sculptures of women. — Nicholas D. Kristof

If the U.S. wants to help people in tsunami-hit countries like Sri Lanka and Indonesia - not to mention other poor countries in Africa - there's one step that would cost us nothing and would save hundreds of thousands of lives. It would be to allow DDT in malaria-ravaged countries. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Women aren't the problem but the solution. The plight of girls is no more a tragedy than an opportunity. — Nicholas D. Kristof

In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world. — Nicholas D. Kristof

One thing the humanitarian world doesn't do well is marketing. As a journalist, I get pitched every day by companies that have new products. Meanwhile, you have issues like clean water, literacy for girls, female empowerment. People flinch at the idea of marketing these because marketing sounds like something only companies do. — Nicholas D. Kristof

One of the things that really got to me was talking to parents who had been burned out of their villages, had family members killed, and then when men showed up at the wells to get water, they were shot — Nicholas D. Kristof

All of a sudden their husband's dead and maybe a child is dead and they have absolutely nothing - and they're heading through the desert at night. — Nicholas D. Kristof

...Environmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they've lost credibility with the public. — Nicholas D. Kristof

I try to be careful about wording. One of the things I've tried to combat in my blog is the notion that journalists are arrogant and unconcerned with the readership. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Sometimes I wish eastern Congo could suffer an earthquake or a tsunami, so that it might finally get the attention it needs. The barbaric civil war being waged here is the most lethal conflict since World War II and has claimed at least 30 times as many lives as the Haiti earthquake. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Photographs are still being taken but aren't being shown. There's one of a skeleton bound at the wrists with pants still around its ankles; if it was a woman, she was likely raped; if it was a man, he was possibly castrated. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Neither Western donor countries like the U.S. nor poor recipients like Cameroon care much about Africans who are poor, rural and female — Nicholas D. Kristof

If you just try to make rational arguments about why people should care about Congo and how 5 million people have died, then people tend not to be receptive. But once you've created a connection of empathy, rational arguments can play a supportive role. — Nicholas D. Kristof

The fact that people will pay you to talk to people and travel to interesting places and write about what intrigues you, I am just amazed by that. — Nicholas D. Kristof

The intelligence community is so vast that more people have top secret clearance than live in Washington. The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Our national leaders tend to try to protect the national interest as they see it. They may screw up in that, but they at least see that as their role. In contrast, where issues of our national values are involved, which covers pretty much any humanitarian issue, they pretty much drop the ball. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Rising seas create a higher baseline for future storm surges. The New York City Panel on Climate Change has projected that coastal waters may rise by two feet by 2050 and four feet by the end of the century. — Nicholas D. Kristof

More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides in six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. — Nicholas D. Kristof

I think it's dangerous to be optimistic. — Nicholas D. Kristof

The tide of history is turning women from beasts of burden and sexual playthings into full-fledged human beings. — Nicholas D. Kristof

So Kim Kardashian is getting a divorce, 72 days after a wedding that is variously reported to have cost $10 million or more. Just to put that in perspective, that sum could have built 200 schools in poor countries around the world for kids who desperately want an education. Then Kardashian could have helped transform the world, not just entertain it. And the schools would have lasted incomparably longer than her marriage. — Nicholas D. Kristof

For most of history, genocide was just something governments did and nobody blinked. — Nicholas D. Kristof

There is an element of anger among women who've been raped. There's certainly a major element of humiliation. But it really does seem like a medical condition of shock and horror. — Nicholas D. Kristof

It’s time for a 21st-century abolitionist movement in the U.S and around the world. — Nicholas D. Kristof

The equivalent of five jumbo jets' worth of women die in labor each day, but the issue is almost never covered. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Sandy was particularly destructive because it was prevented from moving back out to sea by a "blocking pattern" associated with the jet stream. There's debate about this, but one recent study suggested that melting sea ice in the Arctic may lead to such blocking. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Individual storytelling is incredibly powerful. We as journalists know intuitively what scientists of the brain are discovering through brain scans, which is that emotional stories tend to open the portals, and that once there's a connection made, people are more open to rational arguments. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices . — Nicholas D. Kristof

In much of the world, the most dangerous thing a woman can do is become pregnant. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Compassion isn't a sign of weakness, but a mark of civilization. — Nicholas D. Kristof

China was probably the worst place in the world to grow up female 100 years ago. There was foot binding, female infanticide, concubinage, and child marriage, and now it's one of the better places. So I really do feel that we're on the right side of history here. — Nicholas D. Kristof

We tie ourselves in knots when we act as if democracy is good for the United States and Israel but not for the Arab world. For far too long, we've treated the Arab world as just an oil field. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Conservatives, who have presumed that the key to preventing AIDS is abstinence-only education, and liberals, who have focused on distribution of condoms, should both note that the intervention that has tested most cost-effective in Africa is neither... Secular bleeding hearts and religious bleeding hearts will have to forge a common cause. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Laws matter, but typically changing the law by itself accomplishes little. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Palestinian militancy has accomplished nothing but increasing the misery of the Palestinian people. If Palestinians instead turned more to huge Gandhi-style nonviolence resistance campaigns, the resulting videos would reverberate around the world and Palestine would achieve statehood and freedom. — Nicholas D. Kristof

The photos were taken by African Union soldiers. People in Congress saw them. I thought if people could see them, there would be public outcry. No one would be able to say, We just didn't know what was going on there. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Usually people are very much focused on keeping their kids alive. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Let me be clear: I'm a believer in a robust military, which is essential for backing up diplomacy. But the implication is that we need a balanced tool chest of diplomatic and military tools alike. Instead, we have a billionaire military and a pauper diplomacy. The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service - and that's preposterous. — Nicholas D. Kristof

I think when hundreds of thousands of lives are on the line, you might have to set aside some principles. — Nicholas D. Kristof

If one is talking to a finance minister of a poor country, moral arguments tend not to get very far. But if you can argue that their country is going to grow 2 percent faster per year if they can just harness the power of the female half of the population more effectively, that is an argument they consider. — Nicholas D. Kristof

There isn't a political price to be paid yet for doing nothing. People need to get upset with President Bush. People need to get upset with their Congressmen. — Nicholas D. Kristof

American airstrikes...create risks, especially if our intelligence there is rusty. The crucial step, and the one we should apply diplomatic pressure to try to achieve, is for Maliki to step back and share power with Sunnis while accepting decentralization of government. If Maliki does all that, it may still be possible to save Iraq. Without that, airstrikes would be a further waste in a land in which we've already squandered far, far too much. — Nicholas D. Kristof

I have often tried to tell the story of a place through people there. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Guilt-tripping people does not work; they tend to be turned off. — Nicholas D. Kristof

The trails are a reminder of our insignificance. We come and go, but nature is forever. It puts us in our place, underscoring that we are not lords of the universe but components of it...So when the world seems to be falling apart, when we humans seem to be creating messes everywhere we turn, maybe it's time to rejuvenate in the cathedral of the wilderness - and there, away from humanity, rediscover our own humanity. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Isn't it time to talk not only about weather, but also about climate? — Nicholas D. Kristof

Americans have called on moderates in Muslim countries to speak out against extremists, to stand up for the tolerance they say they believe in. We should all have the guts do the same at home. — Nicholas D. Kristof

In general, talking about human rights tends to be very persuasive for people who care about human rights. — Nicholas D. Kristof

One of the principles of journalism is you don't lie. You never lie. — Nicholas D. Kristof

I think it's dangerous to be optimistic. Things could go terribly wrong virtually overnight — Nicholas D. Kristof

You could perhaps better tell the story of a place by writing of a tiny village as a sort of prism into the bigger issues the culture was facing. It struck me as a better way to learn about a place, or at least a different way, than just going to interview the president. So I have often tried to tell the story of a place through people there. But I'm just amazed. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Solar power is one of the most hopeful technologies but still produces about 0.01 percent of U.S. electricity. The U.S. allocates just $159 million for solar research per year - about what we spend in Iraq every nine hours. — Nicholas D. Kristof

If only women are talking about women's rights, then the issue has failed from the start. If you think about the Holocaust, that wasn't just a Jewish issue. Civil rights weren't just a black issue. — Nicholas D. Kristof

It's important not to demonize [Donald's] Trump voters. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Random violence is incredibly infectious — Nicholas D. Kristof

The news media's silence, particularly television news, is reprehensible. — Nicholas D. Kristof

I said that one can't stereotype [Donald] Trump voters anymore than they can anybody else. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Americans of faith should try as hard to save the lives of African women as the lives of unborn fetuses. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Life Lessons by Nicholas D. Kristof

1. Nicholas D. Kristof's work highlights the importance of using journalism to bring attention to global issues and advocate for social justice.
2. His work serves as an example of how journalists can use their platform to make a difference and bring awareness to issues that are often overlooked.
3. He demonstrates that it is possible to use journalism to make a positive impact on the world and fight for a more equitable future.