Robert Zoellick

“My true love is history, but I didn't know how I could make a living at it.”

“There are many roads to prosperity, but one must be taken. Inaction leads nowhere.”

“Private sector development and the creation of small businesses spur investment, jobs, opportunity, and hope. It empowers the market to meet local needs, whether for food, basic goods, or services.”

“Rwanda is a landlocked country, but it hasn't stopped developing. They built a high-end tourism industry around the mountain gorillas.”

“When I work with countries struggling to pay for budgets or finance trade deficits, I reflect on how Americans do not spend a moment considering the unique advantages of being able to issue bonds and print money freely.”

“An empowered public is the foundation for a stronger society, more effective government, and a more successful state.”

“The most effective executive branch officials try to help legislators develop explanations for the votes they are being asked to take.”

“It is much harder for economies to prosper if they cannot sell to, buy from, invest with, and even transit their neighbors. Landlocked countries with failed or failing neighbors can lose access to the world economy.”

“Great upheavals produce shock waves that widen cracks in political, economic, and security orders. Sometimes the old orders break. Yet it can be in the power of leaders and peoples to shape the directions of change.”

“It is clearly the case that programs in Europe and the United States that have increased biofuel production have contributed to the added demand for food.”

“All of us make mistakes. The key is to acknowledge them, learn, and move on. The real sin is ignoring mistakes, or worse, seeking to hide them.”

“One of the challenges for sub-Saharan Africa is that markets are of modest size. This makes regional integration important.”

“Japan rose from the ashes of World War II as a 'trading state,' the model for export-led growth. It is not clear that the old export model of growth will be sustainable in a more 'balanced' global economy that does not rely so heavily on the U.S. consumer.”

“It is vital that the World Bank Group continually challenges itself to refresh our development thinking. It is vital that a modernized multilateralism be open to new ideas.”

“Don't just analyze a problem - solve it.”

“When I consider a problem, it is now instinctive for me to think about the institutions involved, the authorizing environment, possible coalitions, likely opposition, implementation, legal issues, resource dimensions, communications - and how the problem fits into a stream of other issues.”

“Since I came to the World Bank in 2007, I have argued that we must 'modernize multilateralism.'”

“The Congress has had an uneasy relationship with banks and bankers since Alexander Hamilton. It took the United States until 1913 to set up a central bank. The Federal Reserve earned its hard-won independence over years of effort.”