A biography for James Wolfensohnhasn’t been written yet.
“You can't wish away poverty overnight.”
“So the first thing you need to do about conflict is to prevent it, and the best way of preventing it is by dealing with the question of poverty.”
“I'm not at all sure that Israel can determine what happens in Palestine, the Palestinian territories.”
“If you have Palestinians who have no hope, who don't have a job, who've used up all their resources, the notion of getting rid of violence is a dream.”
“Many people of my generation grew up in developed countries thinking that the world was divided into two parts and that there was a wall round the developed world. They thought that poor people had no relevance to us. What happened on September 11 was that anybody who thought there was a wall now knows that there is no wall.”
“Rebuilding Afghanistan is not going to be solved by pouring billions in. Getting rid of the Taliban does not rid us of the problems of fundamentalism and instability.”
“As you look at the flow of Muslim fundamentalism, or fundamentalism in various areas and various religions, they all play on the people who have very little.”
“In a democracy, you can be right and still lose power.”
“You need to have a secure Israel, which is very clear, and you need to have a Palestinian community that feels it can have hope.”
“But when someone is on a winning horse, and everything looks wonderful, it's very hard as an outsider to persuade them something is wrong.”
“When I travel, I make certain that I spend at least half of my time in the field. You have to get out to meet people that are in poverty, that are looking to improve their lives. That's something that you can't read in books.”
“My observation on most people in national governments is that they have very little interest in and very little knowledge of the multinational institutions.”
“The Bank had never used the word 'corruption' at all until I got there, and the reason for that was, as the general counsel pointed out to me, that quite a number of our shareholders represented were not immune from corruption in their governments.”