quotations about the United Nations
And our enduring strength is also reflected in our respect for an international system that protects the rights of both nations and people -- a United Nations and a Universal Declaration of Human Rights; international law and the means to enforce those laws. But we also know that those rules are not self-executing; they depend on people and nations of goodwill continually affirming them.
BARACK OBAMA
Address to European Youth at Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, Belgium, March 26, 2014
The United Nations is one of the most sacrosanct forums for establishing international legal mechanisms.
CARLA STEA
"Report from the UN: The US, UK, France and South Korea Are In Violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty", Global Research, April 17, 2017
War! Huh? What is it good for? Well, for start? It sorts out who is the strongest out of the two countries. Also, you get to see some amazing explosions. But, there is some people out there who not only don't enjoy the war, but they try to spoil the fun for everyone else. And those chickens is called the 'U.N.' Me went to New York to meet these player-haters.
SACHA BARON COHEN
"War", Da Ali G Show, February 28, 2003
There is perhaps no greater boogieman for Republican lawmakers in Washington than that bloated monstrosity of a bureaucracy called the United Nations. This year, the Trump administration appears to be deadly serious in curtailing the UN's resources--a campaign that, if successful, would severely handicap the amount of influence that the United States currently possesses within the international system.
DANIEL R. DEPETRIS
"Trump's plan to defund the UN would be a great way to draw America's military into many more global conflicts", Quartz, May 2, 2017
Trump once said he could convert the U.N. building into a luxury hotel. This may be the very best idea of all rather then leaving the building as a luxury meeting place for people who do virtually nothing but cost this nation money and problems.
JOHN SHIELDS
"The United Nations is a good idea gone bad", Sonoran News, May 9, 2017
On the one hand, the United Nations is an international actor acting independently of its membership, pursuing collective goals and regulating the behavior of states. On the other, it is not much more than elaborate standing conference machinery, based on nineteenth-century thought, and is controlled by states.
N. D. WHITE
The United Nations System: Toward International Justice
The United Nations is again acting as a wannabe global government and perverting the meaning of human rights.
ALEX NEWMAN
"UN: Repealing ObamaCare Violates 'International Law'", The New American, April 27, 2017
The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the U.N. and what it means clearly. Everything will be all right -- you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction, and see it as a drawing they made themselves.
DAG HAMMARSKJOLD
Time Magazine, June 27, 1955
For the first time since World War II the international community is united. The leadership of the United Nations, once only a hoped-for ideal, is now confirming its founders' vision.... The world can therefore seize this opportunity to fulfill the long-held promise of a new world order.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
State of the Union message to the nation, January 29, 1991
In short, habit, indifference and certain beliefs can combine to explain war or render it admissible or justifiable. An emphatic voice must therefore be raised in defence of peace. The United Nations is the place par excellence where this appeal has resounded with a power that has continued to amplify as it progressed towards universality.
B. G. RAMCHARAN
Keeping Faith With the United Nations
The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine ... a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.
CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN
New Republic, November 4, 1985
In the most idyllic depiction, the UN is: a global community that protects the world's most vulnerable people, a forum for states to sit down and resolve their differences peacefully, and a place to prevent territorial disputes from deteriorating into full blown warfare. To many Americans, however, the United Nations is nothing more than a bureaucracy on steroids, where American taxpayer money is misappropriated or mismanaged.
DANIEL R. DEPETRIS
"Trump's plan to defund the UN would be a great way to draw America's military into many more global conflicts", Quartz, May 2, 2017
The United Nations is like a great big bus with 50 passengers in it. As to five of them, each has a separate brake with which he can stop the whole bus. Now, the nations can, if they want, provide an auxiliary bus, a safety bus, an extra one, that can come along afterward; and whenever one of the Big Five stops the big bus, all the others have to do is to get out and get into the safety bus.
AUGUSTIN FREDERIC HAMON
Lessons of the World War
In a sense, the United Nations is like a vase. Without a vase there can be no lasting bouquet of flowers; but the aroma--or perfume--depends on the flowers, not on the vase.
UNKNOWN
Parameters, 1977
It is an illusion to believe that the United Nations is like a larva, which one fine day will burst out of its cocoon as a magnificent butterfly, in the form of a world government.
ALF ROSS
The United Nations: Peace and Progress
The motto of the United Nations is, "It's your #World." Perhaps that should be amended to the words of the great Irish Statesman Edmund Burke, that, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
BOB ROBERTSON
"The enduring-myth of the United Nations", Blasting News, April 15, 2017
The plain truth is the day is coming when no single nation, however powerful, can undertake by itself to keep the peace outside its own borders. Regional and international organizations for peace-keeping purposes are as yet rudimentary; but they must grow in experience and be strengthened by deliberate and practical cooperative action.
ROBERT MCNAMARA
address before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Montreal, Canada, May 19, 1966
Despite its shortcomings, the U.N. remains a good investment for the international community considering that the costs for its peacekeeping operations, albeit not a small sum, account for less than 0.5 percent of the total military expenditures worldwide.
HITOKI DEN
"U.N. credibility is at stake", Japan Times, April 18, 2017
The United Nations represents not a final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive stage. Therefore its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization.
JOHN FOSTER DULLES
War on Peace
The United Nations is being reborn, its peace-making potential is expanding and faith in its ideals and principles is becoming stronger.
VLADIMIR PETROVSKY
attributed, The Future Role of the United Nations in an Interdependent World