Happy are those few nations that have not waited till the slow succession of human vicissitudes should, from the extremity of evil, produce a transition to good; but by prudent laws have facilitated the progress from one to the other!
There are nations, where people live in captivity, fear and silence. I believe, one day from prison camps and torture cells and from exile the leaders of freedom will emerge. The world should stand with those oppressed people until the day of their freedom finally arrives.
I have a 100-mile round trip commute on some of the nations’ busiest roads and enjoy every minute of it.
I have frequently pointed out that the future belongs to nations with grains and not guns.
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
Dreams from 1991 are becoming reality. We will build good relations between nations and people. We will strive towards mutual respect and equality of every individual, sex, race and national or any other minority.
America has to act. But, when America acts, other nations accuse us of being ‘hegemonistic’, of engaging in ‘unilateralism’, of behaving as if we’re the only nation on earth that counts. We are.
The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjuration of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security.
Strong families lead to strong nations.
I strongly believe being mayor is the public post in which you have the greatest opportunity to change peoples’ lives for the better. People live in cities, not states or nations. As a mayor, you are connected directly to citizens.
The Eurasian union is a project meant to preserve the identities of nations and the historic Eurasian community in the new century, in a new world.
The longing for peace is rooted in the hearts of all men. But the striving, which at present has become so insistent, cannot lay claim to such an ambition as leading the way to eternal peace, or solving all disputes among nations.
The fundamental interest – long-range strategic interest – of the state of Israel is that we will have the international bodies and primarily the United Nations recognize the two-state solution, so that there will never be any doubt as to the right of Israel to have its own Jewish independent state.
Membership of the United Nations gives every member the right to make a fool of himself, and that is a right of which the Soviet Union in this case has taken full advantage.
I find it strange that our children, teenagers are kept captive listening in classrooms. Earlier education was for career and livelihood. Now, it has to rise to solve the crisis facing the earth and nations have to pay attention to the education of children to save this planet.
Dissensions between Muslim nations run at least as deep, if not deeper, than those nations’ resentment of the West.
I don’t believe that the U.S. needs to take a police role. I think it needs to support African nations that have said they want to become a part of the solution.
No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.
People are ready to say, ‘Yes, we are ready for single-payer health insurance.’ We are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have national health insurance. We are the richest in wealth and the poorest in health of all the industrial nations.
As we have sought through the centuries to define ourselves as human beings and as nations through the prisms of history and literature, no small part of that effort has drawn us to the subject of war. We might even say that the humanities began with war and from war, and have remained entwined with it ever since.
A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
The United Nations charter gives every nation the right to self defence, therefore when the American embassies were bombed it was a matter of time before the Americans responded by going for what they suspected were the causes of the attack.
In nations where the voices of intolerance are most visible and momentarily powerful, it is in our long run interests to remain firm in our clear articulation that the use of violence in response to speech is to be condemned.
Keeping small nations enslaved because of the deals between the great nations or because of any pragmatic considerations that might have been there are totally unacceptable.
We pride ourselves on our democratic traditions, but in Canada, women couldn’t vote until 1918, Asians until 1948, and First Nations people living on reserves until 1960.
As nations we should also commit afresh to righting past wrongs. In Australia we began this recently with the first Australians – the oldest continuing culture in human history. On behalf of the Australian Parliament, this year I offered an apology to indigenous Australians for the wrongs they had suffered in the past.
Those nations of artists, finding their own individualism, and kind of standing against the world: to me that’s the ultimate nightmare. I want to get lost and diffused in the world.
Globalization is going to bring us closer and closer together across nations and technology you can’t stop.
In today’s world, it is shortsighted to think that infectious diseases cannot cross borders. By allowing developing countries access to generic drugs, we not only help improve health in those nations, we also help ourselves control these debilitating and often deadly diseases.
The fruits of science and innovation have nourished our society and economy for years, but nations unable to navigate our regulatory system are often excluded, as are vulnerable individuals.
Resource-rich nations should not ignore efficiency simply because energy is abundant.
There is no such thing as the United Nations.
Going abroad to study as a teenager, and joining the United Nations at 22, confirmed my ease with the world of the frequent flyer. I saw the average airport terminal as a familiar haven, like a friend’s sitting room. But 9/11 changed all that.
There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.
We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not.
Governments and nations should sit together and resolve issues. Reforms must be reached through understanding. But others should not interfere.
The lessons Noam Chomsky sets out to teach us in ‘Toward a New Cold War’ are invaluable. The United States, like any other nations, can and does err, and often in a big way. But Chomsky cannot support at all his implicit diagnosis that America is ‘bad.’
The diffusion of a universalist culture and of a pedagogy of peace appears more than ever to be the path that we must follow for the salvation of all nations on earth.
One of the main lessons I have learned the last five years as Secretary-General is that the United Nations cannot function properly without the support of the business community and civil society. We need to have tripartite support – the governments, the business communities and the civil society.
If the world’s leaders are serious about improving collective well-being, we’d better get serious about prioritizing education in our nations and in our global discussion.
How does the past ambush us? How can we be accurate about what happened, how can we be true to it? And can war be declared over? And can we ever evolve from the notion of war, of nations, of us versus them?
This means that the search for a formula of European cooperation in connection with the League of Nations, far from weakening the authority of this latter must and can only tend to strengthen it, for it is closely connected with its aims.
As we have seen, the wireless and the airplane have made the world so small and nations so dependent on each other that the only alternative to war is the United States of the World.
I believe the Obama administration, from the president on down, has taken a very weak position regarding granting Palestine statehood at the United Nations.
Only to the extent that men desire peace and brotherhood can the world be made better. No peace even though temporarily obtained, will be permanent, whether to individuals or nations, unless it is built upon the solid foundation of eternal principles.
I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America’s role as a light among nations. But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war.
I don’t want to force the peacekeeping nations to feel like I’m pushing them out.
Whether addressing immediate crises or building long-term foundations of peace, the United Nations will remain committed to solutions that advance the global good.
