Top Kumi Naidoo Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Kumi Naidoo Biography

Kumi Naidoo (born 1965) is a South African human rights activist and previously the International Executive Director of international environmentalist group Greenpeace. He was the first African to head the organisation. After battling apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s through the Helping Hands Youth Organisation, Naidoo led global campaigns to end poverty and protect human rights. He has served as the secretary-general of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. He was Secretary General of Civicus, an international alliance for citizen participation, from 1998 to 2008. Recently, he has led the Global Call for Climate Action (Tcktcktck.org), which brings together environmental, aid, religious and human rights groups, labour unions, scientists and others and has organised mass demonstrations around climate negotiations.

Read about Kumi Naidoo in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Kumi Naidoo Quotes

The reality is today most of our political leaders want to be treated as gods and semi-gods, from the security details to the fuss around them and so on.

Gods, Leader, Leaders, Political, Reality, Treated

Sandy was a climate change warning. Obama must now take the stage and fulfil the promise of hope the world needs.

Climate, Needs, Promise, Sandy, Take, Warning

Nelson Mandela also spoke about how, as a human being, he's made mistakes.

Human, Made, Mistake, Mistakes, Spoke, Spokes

The struggle to avert catastrophic climate change is bigger than all the other struggles, whether it is slavery, democracy struggles, the woman's right to vote, and so on I would argue that if what is at stake is securing life as we know it, then there can be no bigger struggle that we face.

Democracy, Faces, Slavery, Stake, Struggle, Struggles

My final advice for young people is to not wait for leadership from adult politicians. Step forward today, because our current leaders are denying the dire reality we are facing. Leadership can come form anywhere.

Final, Leader, People, Reality, Step, Young

I think even though he [Nelson Mandela] was feted and praised as he was, he always was at pains to say, I'm a human being.

Feted, Humans, Mandela, Pain, Pains, Thinking

You know how they say, 'What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?' What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic.

Arctic, Happens, Know How, Stay, Vegas

Nelson Mandela was just a human being, a person like other people, and everyone relaxed. Within a minute, that sort of thing about the leader and the lead, the gap was closed, and that's a rare thing.

Closed, Gaps, Lead, Leader, People, Thing

There is no definition of terrorism and there is still the reality that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.

Definitions, Fighter, Reality, Terrorist, That One Person

Nelson's Mandela own sense of himself was a very humble reading, [different] from how the world read him. And, quite often, you had the sense that he was not comfortable with all the accolades that would be.

Accolades, Different, Humble, Quite, Reading

A movement only becomes a movement of substance, size, and power when the artists say 'we want to add our voice. '

Add, Artist, Say, Substance, Voice

I've come across a lot of people in my life who talk about poverty and talk about the poor, but you rarely have a sense that it matters to them to the point at which they will be willing to sacrifice something.

Matter, Matters, People, Rarely, Sacrifice

Nelson Mandela once said "I can't help it if the ladies take note of me; I'm not going to protest. "

Helping, Nelson, Notes, Protest, Said, Take

If not one more cent in new aid money flowed [to Africa], we could with more urgency and efficiency and creativity be doing much more to take more people out of poverty.

Africa, Creativity, People, Poverty, Take

The city of Copenhagen is a climate crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport in shame. World leaders had a once in a generation chance to change the world for good, to avert catastrophic climate change. In the end they produced a poor deal full of loopholes big enough to fly Air Force One through.

Airports, Catastrophic, Cities, Deal, Full, Men

[Nelson] Mandela was very keen not to be understood as an exceptional person.

Exceptional, Keen, Mandela, Persons, Understood

Currently, we allow our political and business leaders to get away with murder. Now is the time to change that. We need direct liability for those who are destroying our future and this planet. We need fast, profound and systemic change. History only moves forward when courageous people get up and act. That's why I support this citizens' initiative to recognise ecocide as the crime it is.

Currently, Direct, Moving Forward, People, Profound, Systemic

In Durban, where I was born and grew up, and all over Africa, Nelson Mandela was a hero! Now he is a hero to the world.

Born, Durban, Hero, Mandela, Nelson, World

Many people theorize poverty, but so many elements of poverty, individually, for most people who theorize about poverty would be really difficult to even comprehend the individual things. Just take homelessness. If you are homeless, what does it mean not to have a post box where people can contact you; what does it mean not knowing where you're going to sleep at the end of the day; what does it mean not having a place where you can store what little you might possess. So dealing with homelessness in itself is a huge thing for most people who are commentators [on] or benefactors to poverty.

Box, Dealing, Individually, Knowing, Mean, Sleep

One of the things that I noticed with my own eyes was Nelson Mandela ability to engage with kings and queens and heads of state on the one hand, and his ability to engage with ordinary people, equally comfortably.

Kings, Queens, Eye, Engage, Things