Top ten quotes of Davos 2013

A round-up of startling facts and rhetorical feats from a week of impassioned debate in Davos.

“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 An Insight, An Idea

“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

Image: Angela Merkel at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos 2013

Most of the quotes were paraphrased for Twitter.