Antonio de Oliveira Salazar Quotes

The nations must be organized internationally and induced to enter into partnership, subordinating in some measure national sovereignty to worldwide institutions and obligations.

The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail, and to be seen to fail. If there is something you are expected to do, but don't want to do, or even have done for you, you can safely appeal to the UN in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.

When America rejected the League, she had deliberately chosen to rest solely upon treaties with the sanction of public opinion alone…

The Nation is ceasing to be the leading form off the world’s structure; organizations transcending national boundaries are becoming more and more numerous and effective.

In the United States, there is a broadly shared view that the U.N. is one of many potential instruments to advance U.S. issues, and we have to decide whether a particular issue is best done through the U.N. or best done through some other mechanism.

The U.N. is one of many competitors in a marketplace of global problem solving.

The purpose of the United Nations should be to protect the essential sovereignty of nations, large and small.

As the highest ranking American official in the United Nations organization, I came to understand thoroughly that the national constitutional processes of the member states define the status of territories under their sovereignty.

I would never play any role in anything that involves the United Nations for obvious reasons.

There is no such thing as the United Nations.

The international body must have the institutions and powers it needs to do what it is created to do; in other words it must be boldly and openly set up as a super-state on a level above the national sovereignties, and that, in turn, means that the Member States must have accepted in advance as much limitation and subordination of their particular sovereignties as this superior sovereign power requires.

If governments do not want to work with the U.N. and the international organizations, there is a limit to what you can do. And there is also a limit to patience.

The United Nations is a failed institution in its current form.

World government is a premature concept at this stage. We are moving more and more into supernational arrangements, but it is too early still.

The best thing that most Americans can say about the UN is that it is ineffectual. That’s the best thing.

…though the American government did much to encourage the organs of the League, the fact that it stood aside, sharing neither the rights nor the duties of the League powers, was a fatal handicap to joint action.

The United Nations is really the League of Nations 2.0

International institutions like the UN can only be as effective as its members allow it to be.

The League of Nations is the greatest humbug in history. They cannot even protect a little nation like Armenia. They do nothing but pass useless resolutions.

Without American leadership at the U.N., countries just continue to talk and socialize and spend taxpayer dollars.

I've been involved in and out of the U.N. for many years - in fact my first internship was in 1971, so it goes back a couple of years!

There was an implicit conviction that the UN would be stronger than the sum of its constituent member-states.

Sadly, I do my homework. I've a soft spot for the boring minutiae. I read the Charter of the United Nations before meeting with Kofi Annan. I read the Meltzer report, and then I'll read C. Fred Bergsten's defense of institutions like the World Bank and the I.M.F. It's embarrassing to admit.

It's very liberating for me to realize that I don't have to step up to the plate with a plot that involves the U.N. Security Council.

The U.N. is capable of endless process and mindless psychobabble, but as far as getting the job done on the ground, I just don't see them doing it.