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OCR Page 1 of 22First Lady Hillary Clinton in Davos
http://www3.itu.int/MISSIONS/US/davos/clinton.htm
Hillary Rodham Clinton
First Lady of the United States
at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum
Davos, Switzerland
February 2, 1998
(Begin transcript)
PROFESSOR KLAUS SCHWAB: Dear Madam First Lady, dear Mrs. Hillary Clinton, it is with purpose
that I address you in those two forms, because we welcome you here not only as the representative of a
country which is the greatest power in the world, but we welcome you as a personality who in her own
right has won high recognition for the causes you stand for as a relentless advocate for those who are
disadvantaged and who need to be integrated into our efforts to improve the state of the world.
We have launched here, in Davos, a comprehensive initiative Trustees 21, to take on the challenges in the
transition of human kind into the 21 Century. We are eager to hear from you. How you see the
individual and collective priorities for our common future. Ladies and Gentlemen, let's welcome again
Mrs. Clinton, a most remarkable, a most courageous woman of our times.
FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Good evening, thank you very much Professor
Schwab, and thank all of you for the invitation to address this forum. I appreciated greatly the
opportunity to come and be part of these sessions, and to speak with you about the priorities for the 21st
Century, as seen perhaps from a slightly different perspective from the one that brings many of you here
to this conference.
After having looked at the program, and seen some of the sessions, I think it is probably more appropriate
to refer to this gathering as the World Economic, Political and Social Forum, because certainly in the
discussions that I have been privileged to hear about and to hear directly, it has struck me that there is a
very strong awareness of how interdependent the economic, political and social spheres of life happen to
be. It is something that I think we need to pay even closer attention to. Certainly when one thinks about
the economy, whether it is the economy of a business, of a nation state, or of our entire globe, one talks a
great deal about the importance of and the significance of the free market. And I believe that as we end
this century, any doubt about the effectiveness of organizing our economy along the lines of a free
market, have finally been put to rest. That is one of the major accomplishments, perhaps, of this past
century. That we now understand that the greatest capacity to create employment, income, wealth and
investment is derived from a free market.
At the same time, I hope we have also recognized as we end this century, that we need effective,
functioning, competent governments. Governments that are neither oppressive, nor too strong and
authoritarian, nor on the other hand, so weak that they can neither deliver goods and services for the
public good to their citizenry or play the kind of partnership role that they should in connection with a
vital free market.
But if that's all we were to speak about, the economy on the one hand, and government on the other, we
would be leaving out one of the most important aspects of what we should turn our attention to as we
move into this new century, that is society, civil society, because between the marketplace and the
government, is what exists that makes life worth living. It is the stuff of life. It is the family, it is the
religious belief and spirituality that guide us. It is the voluntary association of which we are a member. It
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