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" Since the end of the 1970s, something has gone profoundly wrong in America. Inequality has soared. Educational progress slowed. Incarceration rates quintupled. Family breakdown accelerated. Median household income stagnated. "

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" Most moms and dads, they want to be good moms and dads. But it's an incredibly hard job when you are stressed out, when you are poor, when your life is in chaos. And giving them some of the tools to be better parents, to whittle away at that parenting gap, gives those kids a much better starting point in life. "

Nicholas Kristof

Parenting

You

Parents

" Too often, wealthy people born on third base blithely criticize the poor for failing to hit home runs. The advantaged sometimes perceive empathy as a sign of muddle-headed weakness rather than as a marker of civilization. "

" In effect, Saudi Arabia legitimizes fundamentalism, religious discrimination, intolerance and the oppression of women. Saudi women not only can't drive, but are also told by some clerics that they mustn't wear seatbelts for fear of showing the outlines of their bodies. "

" I think we need to rethink a lot of business skills. In finance, for example, social impact bonds are potentially a way of providing capital for investments that save the public money in a context in which government often doesn't invest in things that would save it money. "

" It is so much easier to try to help a six-month-old child or a six-year-old child than it is a 16-year-old troubled kid. "

" In America, we have subsidized private jets, big banks and hedge fund managers. Wouldn't it make more sense to subsidize kids? "

Nicholas Kristof

Kids

Sense

" When I was born in 1959, the hospital in which I arrived had separate floors for black babies and white babies, and it was then illegal for blacks and whites to marry in many states. "

" I think humanitarians really feel very awkward and embarrassed about marketing, but it really doesn't matter whether a shampoo gets better marketing. It does matter when a famine or a huge crisis is - oh - well, I hate to use the word 'marketed' better but, you know, is publicized in a way that will be more effective. "

" One of the things you learn as a journalist is that when there's no accountability, we humans are capable of tremendous avarice and venality. That's true of union bosses - and of corporate tycoons. Unions, even flawed ones, can provide checks and balances for flawed corporations. "

" When I was growing up, yearning with my pals to be a track star, one of our heroes was Bruce Jenner. He won a gold medal at the 1976 Olympics in the decathlon, and he adorned our Wheaties boxes. We all wanted to be Bruce Jenner. "

" Girls' education is no silver bullet. Iran and Saudi Arabia have both educated girls but refused to empower them, so both remain mired in the past. But when a country educates and unleashes women, those educated women often become force multipliers for good. "

" Literature seems to offer lessons in human nature that help us decode the world around us and be better friends. "

" Most of the time in the 21st century, we dominate our surroundings: We tweak the thermostat, and the temperature falls one degree. We push a button, and Taylor Swift sings for us. It's the opposite in the wilderness, which teaches us constantly that we are not lords of the universe but rather building blocks of it. "

" One of my frustrations is that we in society generally have this bifurcation in how we see the world. That's probably a little less true with business audiences, but in general, there tends to be this view that for-profit companies are greedy, and nonprofits are noble. It's absolutely more complicated than that. "

" One of the aims of higher education is to broaden perspectives, and what better way than by a home stay in a really different country, like Bangladesh or Senegal? Time abroad also leaves one more aware of the complex prism of suspicion through which the United States is often viewed. "

" Seniors vote, and that is why we have, you know, Medicare since the 1960s for seniors, and we didn't have a national healthcare program for children, even though it's a lot more cost-effective to deal with children than with seniors. "

" If I wanted a circus ringmaster, I'd hire Trump. If I wanted advice on brain surgery or hospital management, I'd turn to Carson. Fiorina would make an articulate television pundit. But for president? "

" Purely altruistic behavior is pretty much impossible because of the selfish pleasures we derive from it. "

" Sex and gender are such befuddling mysteries even for those of us who are in the mainstream that you'd think we'd be wary of being judgmental. Yet much of society clings to a view that gender is completely binary, when, in fact, there's overwhelming evidence of a continuum. "

" Utah may well be the most cosmopolitan state in America. Vast numbers of young Mormons - increasingly women as well as men - spend a couple of years abroad as missionaries and return jabbering in Thai or Portuguese and bearing a wealth of international experience. "

" Sure, food stamps are occasionally misused, but anyone familiar with business knows that the abuse of food subsidies is far greater in the corporate suite. Every time an executive wines and dines a hot date on the corporate dime, the average taxpayer helps foot the bill. "

" However imperfectly, subsidies for the poor do actually reduce hunger, ease suffering and create opportunity, while subsidies for the rich result in more private jets and yachts. Would we rather subsidize opportunity or yachts? Which kind of subsidies deserve more scrutiny? "

" One of the biggest complaints readers have about my work is that I don't tell them often enough what they can do. I do think this is an area where journalism sometimes falls short. We describe a really grim situation but don't really explain to people what they can do about it. "

" I think humanitarian organizations should acknowledge the progress more than they do. I think that one reason people are reluctant to provide more help to Africa, for example, is this sense that it's just hopeless, in a way that I think is untrue. "

" Perhaps no country in Latin America is more picturesque than Bolivia, and the most memorable Bolivian city may be Potosi. "

" I do think that humanitarians and journalists alike have focused on all the things that go wrong, and that they sometimes leave the perception in the public that the war on poverty has been lost. That Africa is just a bottomless pit of despair. When, in fact, really the opposite is true on both fronts. "

" Beware of generalizations about any faith because they sometimes amount to the religious equivalent of racial profiling. Hinduism contained both Gandhi and the fanatic who assassinated him. "

" My take is that the optimal approach to food, for health and ethical reasons, may be vegetarianism. "

" When the poor know that their children will survive, when they educate their daughters, when they access family planning, they have fewer children. "

" Worrying about bills, food, or other problems leaves less capacity to think ahead or to exert self-discipline. So, poverty imposes a mental tax. "