Yong Quotes & Sayings

What I learned from my work as a physician is that even with the most complicated patients, the most complicated problems, you've got to look hard to find every piece of data and evidence that you can to improve your decision-making. Medicine has taught me to be very much evidence-based and data-driven in making decisions. — Jim Yong Kim

You talk too much." "You are a real communicator!" "Stop daydreaming." "You are creative!" "Don't be so bossy." "You are confident!" "Stop wiggling. Sit still." "You were born to move! — Yong Pratt

Pages burnt, memories buried, I wake
or think I'm awake. Or dreaming still? — Yong Shu Hoong

What happens when corn and wheat prices rise is that we see real increases in malnutrition and under-nutrition. And when children are malnourished, their brain development actually slows down and is affected. So this is not just a short-term impact. — Jim Yong Kim

We left our home forty years ago. Despite the unhappy events we faced there, we left because our faith allowed it, because our belief in the Lord taught us that we would find a new place, a place to build a heaven on earth. War was waged in our home as we left. Many, many innocents dies. To live, people killed and were killed. In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses reminds his people of the promise made to their ancestors regarding the land of Canaan. He delivers the law, teaching them how to win a life of victory in the land of promise. They said, Jehovah, let all the enemies of the Lord face this same end. Do not pity them or offer them promises, only annihilate them all. And yet, Jesus taught love and peace. I say again - those left behind in our hometown had souls, just as we do. It is we who must repent first. (2007: 17) — Hwang Sok-yong

Chese now," quod she, "oon of thise thynges tweye:
To han me foul and old til that I deye,
And be to yow a trewe, humble wyf,
And nevere yow displese in al my lyf,
Or elles ye wol han me yong and fair,
And take youre aventure of the repair
That shal be to youre hous by cause of me,
Or in som oother place, may wel be.
Now chese yourselven, wheither that yow liketh. — Geoffrey Chaucer

Their incompatible appearances have actually made them more compatible ... Some people said that when a couple comes together ... they will compliment each others shortcomings — Bae Yong-joon

Forget Orson Welles, and heed Walt Whitman: "I am large, I contain multitudes."5 — Ed Yong

Why is it that when it comes to our most cherished social goal [health care], we not only tolerate poor execution, sometimes we even celebrate it? — Jim Yong Kim

A plate of roast duck, steamed dumplings, spicy noodles with beef gravy, pickled cucumbers, stewed tongue and eggs if you have them, cold please, and sticky rice pearls, too,' Ai Ling said, before the server girl could open her mouth. "I don't know what he wants." Ai Ling nodded toward Chen Yong.
'I'm not sure I have enough coins to order anything more,' he said, laughing. — Cindy Pon

Look at the problem of drug-resistant TB in the world. Look at HIV in the world. What's going to be required for everybody in the long run is the ability to do complex health interventions in poor settings. — Jim Yong Kim

I feel like I'm calmer, I'm kinder, I'm more patient the more I do my own meditation. — Jim Yong Kim

This is a really difficult question. Although I once thought that a dream and an accomplishment are the same thing, I've now changed my mind. A dream is not something you can just reach out to, so I've come to the conclusion that one can only achieve their dream by accomplishing something little by little. — Bae Yong-joon

Live the life you choose and enjoy the happiness and regret that comes with that life.

~Yong-Kum — Lee Eun

We will never end poverty if we don't tackle climate change. — Jim Yong Kim

I suppose the time is ripe for them now, for the people who were there. They're ready now, I think. So ... they appear before us as part of their redemption."
"But you and I, we weren't to blame, were we?"
Suddenly slamming his thick palm down on the table, Uncle Some shouted, "Show me one soul who wasn't to blame!" (2007: 162) — Hwang Sok-yong

People hated and killed each other back then. Now even those who survived are dying, leaving this world one by one. Unless we find a way to forgive one another, none of us will ever be able to see each other again. (2007: 88) — Hwang Sok-yong

They say God is one and the same everywhere, in all countries. Well, I know everything, everything from the very beginning. Those big noses just came here with their books and spread them all over the place. Our ancestors, the founding father of our race, was Tangun. He came down from the heavens a long, long time ago. They say that's not so. They say that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. People should worship their own ancestors properly if they want to be proper human beings. Our country has gone to the dogs because so many have started worshiping someone else's God. (2007: 40) — Hwang Sok-yong

A tale where the knight kills the princess and rescues the demon lord. — Kim Yong-Hwan

I like to change people's sense of what's possible. — Jim Yong Kim

I've spent my entire life working to invest in human beings and human communities, to help them move down the path of economic development. — Jim Yong Kim

In my own view, the life expectancy of Native Americans in the United States is one of the really great moral crises that we face. — Jim Yong Kim

Speaking of palms, your right hand shares just a sixth of its microbial species with your left hand.19 — Ed Yong

North Korea, under its thirtysomething Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, is no country for old men. The latest casualty in Kim's ongoing purge of the senior military command was the defense minister, Hyon Yong-chol, who reportedly committed the classic old man's offense of falling asleep in a meeting. — Barbara Demick

The people your brother killed - well, they all had souls. They weren't Satan. Ryu Yohan wasn't Satan, either. His faith was twisted, that's all. I know now. I know that God is innocent. (2007: 143) — Hwang Sok-yong

I'm trying to tell people that I am happy the way I am. But why do people have to call my happiness a failure? — Kim Ung-yong

I can't say a thing. What is there to say? I have given birth to a son! What more can I possibly hope for? I hear his footsteps crossing the front yard and gradually fading away, off into the distance. As the silence grows, I suddenly realize that hes gone. He's gone to someplace far away, and he's never coming back.(2007: 153) — Hwang Sok-yong

Live as a stranger on the earth.
For this earth of ours is no planet. — Rasu-Yong Tugen

Haiti's economy cannot be built by and benefit just a privileged few. It must be built by and benefit all Haitians. — Jim Yong Kim

We are watching things happen with one degree changes in ocean temperature that we thought wouldn't happen until there were two or three degree changes in ocean temperature. These are facts. — Jim Yong Kim

The water issue is critically related to climate change. People say that carbon is the currency of climate change. Water is the teeth. — Jim Yong Kim

Unless you invest in people, you are not going to see growth in the long term, the medium term, and maybe even the short term. — Jim Yong Kim

Growing economies are critical; we will never be able to end poverty unless economies are growing. We also need to find ways of growing economies so that the growth creates good jobs, especially for young people, especially for women, especially for the poorest who have been excluded from the economic system. — Jim Yong Kim

How can this 'I' be said to have any being other than as a pattern of movement in Heaven and Earth's unfolding union. — Douglas J. Penick

There will be water and food fights everywhere. — Jim Yong Kim

The mere presence of a guitar in someone's bedroom doesn't make them Slash. — Ed Yong

I think one of the main challenges that the World Bank faces is creating an organizational structure that doesn't get in the way of its staff. We have fantastic staff. People told me as I was coming into the organization that the greatest asset of the World Bank Group is its staff, and I think there's no question that that's the case. — Jim Yong Kim

World Bank is a bank that's focused on economic development and poverty alleviation. — Jim Yong Kim

Women are walking around on the streets. From her calf and the hem of her skirt to her hip, from her hair to the high heels on her feet, a young woman is freedom. Especially when you look at her from afar. — Hwang Sok-yong

What we have found is that because of smartphones and access to media, and because everybody knows how everyone else lives, you have no idea where the next huge social movement is going to erupt. — Jim Yong Kim

The relationship between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala fundamentally changes with meditation. — Jim Yong Kim

There is an old saying that goes 'Start by plucking a hair, end by killing a man'. It is also said, 'Two hands must meet to make a sound'. The atrocities that happened here weren't carried out by strangers - it was us, the people who'd once lived together harmoniously in the same village."
"They say it was the superstitious freaks who did it."
"No, it was Satan who did it."
"Come now, what sort of a ghost is that?"
Ryu Yosop replied, "It is the black thing that lives in the heart of every man. — Hwang Sok-yong

Institutionalized discrimination is bad for people and for societies. Widespread discrimination is also bad for economies. There is clear evidence that when societies enact laws that prevent productive people from fully participating in the workforce, economies suffer. — Jim Yong Kim

I want to eradicate poverty. I think that there's a tremendous passion for that inside the World Bank. — Jim Yong Kim

The scene [Bruegel's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'] is filled with a vast field, and a cow and a farmer plowing. In the left-hand corner is a tiny ocean the size of a palm, and there, I can barely make it out, the two legs of a man who fell headlong into the sea. This is called the Fall of Icarus. Compared to everyday life, the fall of an idealist who flew too high with candle-wax wings is an unremarkable tragedy. — Hwang Sok-yong

Back then, I think, both sides were just very young. They needed to grow up enough to realize that thing get quite complicated in the business of living, that a lot of things require mutual understanding and compromise. I mean, when you get right down to it, all business for us men on earth is based on material things - so we've just got to work hard and share the fruits of our labors with one another. Only when that is done righteously can we render our faith honorably to God. Within a generation of adopting a school of thought in the name of New Learning, be it Christianity or socialism, we all became such ardent followers that we forgot the way of life we'd led for so long. (2007: 163) — Hwang Sok-yong

Even if you are alive somewhere, the absence of the other person who used to be there beside you obliterates your presence. Everything in the room, even the stars in the sky, can disappear in a second, changing one scene for another, just like in a dream. — Hwang Sok-yong

If there is something I have not yet written and I must declare about her, is that without her (Laura) will nad her values, today Rebecca and Yong would not be in the individuals I know. Two other different people would now be living somewhere in the world. Not Rebecca and Yong, but someone else. Similarly, without Rebecca and Yong, neither Laura nor myself would be the same. Another two people would be living in Milan, in our apartment. — Roberto G. Ferrari

Carbon is the currency of how you measure climate change, but water will be the teeth. — Jim Yong Kim

Their words flitted past, like short sentences typed out on a keyboard, typing away Yosop's past and future. They all said "American troops," but Yosop knew for a fact that the troops had simply been passing through. They were never stationed in Sinchon; they were in a rush to get further north. Both Yosop and his brother Yohan knew for a fact that during those forty-five days, before the arrival of the U.S. troops and after their departure, most of the military strength in the area had consisted of the security forces and the Youth Corps - all Korean. (2007: 99) — Hwang Sok-yong

One of the lessons of leadership worth emphasizing is that you want to get to know other great leaders and take their advice. At some point in your development, it's only people who've been in the seat of having to be leaders who can help you in a deep way. — Jim Yong Kim

We have to find climate-friendly ways of encouraging economic growth. The good news is we think they exist — Jim Yong Kim

The blazing sun beat down on the concrete of the museum's front yard- Reverend Ryu Yosop felt as if the heat were sucking up all the moisture in his brain and heart. What different colors he and his brother Yohan must have used as each of them painted their own picture of home, of the carnage. These people have constructed yet a different vision of their own, Yosop thought to himself, but it all stems from the same nightmare, the one we created together. — Hwang Sok-yong

Hope is a moral choice. — Jim Yong Kim

Water and sanitation has not had the same kind of champion that global health, and even education, have had. — Jim Yong Kim

Today there are a lot places where people say they're just hopeless. If I can come from a hopeless country, get an education, become a hyphenated American and become president of the World Bank, it's my moral duty to make sure that every single person on the planet has that opportunity. — Jim Yong Kim

As palaeontologist Andrew Knoll once said, "Animals might be evolution's icing, but bacteria are really the cake. — Ed Yong

Within 24 hours of moving into a new place we overwrite it with our own microbes, turning it into a reflection of ourselves. — Ed Yong

Yong is the outer manifestation of something. Ti is the underlying essence. Technology is a yong associated with a particular ti that is ... Western, and completely alien to us [the Chinese]. For centuries, since the time of the Opium Wars, we have struggled to absorb the yong of technology without importing the Western ti. But it has been impossible. Just as our ancestors could not open our ports to the West without accepting the poison of opium, we could not open our lives to Western technology without taking in the Western ideas, which have been as a plague on our society. The result has been centuries of chaos. — Neal Stephenson

When I wrote 'Your Republic Is Calling You,' it was Franz Kafka's writing that I had most in mind, and James Joyce's 'Ulysses.' Entirely out of the blue, Kafka's characters receive an order to go somewhere, and when they try to comply, they never quite manage it. Ki-yong in 'Your Republic Is Calling You' is precisely that sort of character. — Kim Young-ha

If we do not act to curb climate change immediately, we will leave our children and grandchildren an unrecognizable planetIt is the poor, those least responsible for climate change and least able to afford adaptation, who would suffer the most. — Jim Yong Kim

They are like the handful of belongings saved from a burnt-down house. There should be a continuous challenge to authority for change and reform, and groups of ordinary people should form an alliance to reclaim what was taken by the state inch by inch, like a children's game, and enlarge the territory to the level of practical equality. — Hwang Sok-yong

The discussions of the prior generation, shaped by H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture (see chapter three above), still presumed "gospel" and "culture" as two disparate and divergent categories and realities. An incarnational and pentecostal approach to culture realizes that while distinct, the gospel always comes through culture and that culture can - indeed, must! - be redeemed for the purposes of the gospel. — Amos Yong

My father came by himself across the North Korean border when he was seventeen. And hasn't seen his brothers or sisters or parents since then. And he died some time ago, but never saw any of his relatives. My mother was a refugee in war-torn Korea. — Jim Yong Kim

Social media has changed the world forever. We're not going to go backwards. People are not going to accept being poor, accept being excluded anymore. — Jim Yong Kim

It is better to beAn old man's derling than a yong man's werling. — John Heywood

No matter how good you think you are as a leader, my goodness, the people around you will have all kinds of ideas for how you can get better. So for me, the most fundamental thing about leadership is to have the humility to continue to get feedback and to try to get better - because your job is to try to help everybody else get better. — Jim Yong Kim

We need to have a plan equal to the challenge. — Jim Yong Kim

One of the things I had to really work on is, when you're the leader of an organization, people look at the expression on your face. Your mood has a lot to do with how people think the whole organization is doing. — Jim Yong Kim

For to be yong I wald not, for my wis, Off all this warld to mak me lord and king: The more of age, the nerar hevynnis blis. — Robert Henryson

It suddenly occurred to me that the whole notion of this side, of us and them - it was all over. It was no longer the Lord's Crusade. We were no longer fighting to overthrow Satan. We have been tested, I thought to myself, and we have been found wanting. Our faith was corrupted. My comrades and I - we'd become the endless days, days without light. What does that mean, you ask? We were sick and tired of living. At the least provocation, we would spit out, Fuck it, and kill whoever happened to be involved. (2007: 222) — Hwang Sok-yong

God too, has sinned, that's what I used to think. He looked down on this blazing hell, and he remained silent. (2007: 142) — Hwang Sok-yong

The great heart of comrade Kim Jong Il has ceased. — Kim Yong-nam

As it turns out, the atrocities we suffered were committed by none other than ourselves, and the inner sense of guilt and fear sparked by this incident helped form the roots of the frantic hatred that thrives to this day. (2007: 9) — Hwang Sok-yong

Maybe what really matters is technology's power to enable students to reach a vast and real audience that they could never dream of in the traditional classroom. — Yong Zhao

Many people could benefit from meditation. — Jim Yong Kim

In the early 1990s we witnessed the emergence of a revitalized contemporary Chinese art world that began as a reaction against the government-approved Social Realist style. Zhang Xiaogang, Huang Yong Ping, Ai WeiWei, Yue Minjun, and Wang Guangyi were among the first group of artists to establish a movement that became known as Cynical Realism. — Arne Glimcher

She was beautiful, without comparison, but she exuded and icy and emotionless aura. She was as hard and as cold as ice and it was difficult to tell whether she was pleased or angry. — Jin Yong

Economic development and poverty alleviation are so complicated that I don't think there's a single background or a single discipline that is sufficient to tackle these great human problems. — Jim Yong Kim

When you're working on development issues, optimism is not always based on rational analysis, often it is a moral choice. — Jim Yong Kim

If I care about poverty, I have to care a lot about investments in the private sector. The private sector creates the vast majority of jobs in the world, and social protection only goes so far. — Jim Yong Kim

They were happy to help someone, to succeed at something, even if they weren't to benefit. We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean. I realised that if we boosted one another, maybe we'd get a little closer. — Hwang Sok-yong

I've always been engaged in social protection programmes. — Jim Yong Kim

Ending poverty and ensuring sustainability are the defining challenges of our time. Energy is central to both of them. — Jim Yong Kim

A lot of young people don't think they can make a difference. That's really what I am at Dartmouth to do. I'm there to tell the young people, 'Look, a few committed souls can change the world.' — Jim Yong Kim

If you look at three diseases, the three major killers, HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, the only disease for which we have really good drugs is HIV. And it's very simple: because there's a market in the United States and Europe. — Jim Yong Kim

I'm truly grateful to all of the family. However I'm very sorry at the same time. I didn't make many appearances in 'Dream High.' I hope to show you all a better side of me next time. — Bae Yong-joon