Boutros Boutros-Ghali Quotes

Power is the true reserve currency in international affairs.

In power politics, it's usually not enough to be liked. A nation has to be considered essential.

In the international world, when General Electric walks into the room, the Sixth Fleet walks in behind them.

Those who say that America has to dominate the world, and that you either have to control everything or go home, don't understand the way power is projected.

The United States is the world's best hope; but if you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of other nations, if you tangle her in the intrigues of Europe, you will destroy her power for good and endanger her very existence.

No great power will allow itself to be strangulated.

There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.

Both Russia and the United States are struggling to define their proper roles in the world.

China is ruthlessly pragmatic. It supports North Korea for its own selfish interests. And I believe that China no longer considers us an ally. The current president, Xi Jinping, cultivates close relations with South Korea. He has never met with me, the leader of North Korea, something that the leader of China has always done. At the grand celebrations in Beijing two years ago commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, he placed the president of Russia and the president of South Korea at his side. In North Korea, we pay a lot of attention to ceremonies and what they signal.

We will continue to deepen our engagement using every element of American power - diplomacy, military, economic development, the power of our values and our ideals.

Diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power.

The fact that our largest presence in the world is our massive military is going to dictate how we engage with the world.

Oh, diplomacy ... it mops up war's spillages; legitimizes its outcomes; gives the strong state the means to impose its will on a weaker one, while saving its fleets and battalions for weightier opponents.

My priority is to give the United States the kind of influence it should have.

But the same intelligence compels Germany to practise the same policy.

American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation.

Diplomacy is not an end in itself if it does not advance U.S. interests.

The predominant yardstick of your government is not human rights but national interests.

To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.

American presence is, you know, the major cause of balance of power and the stability in this region.

Like Prince von Bismarck in diplomacy, I have no secrets.

No nation has friends only interests.

Everybody pursues their national interests. The only one who gets blamed for it is the United States.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

Someone has said that nations have interests, they don't have friends, and you see that over and over in U.S. policy.