Kofi Annan Quotes

For future geopolitical stability and global prosperity, we need to build a culture of greater trust and understanding between China, America and the rest of the world.

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.

It's not just Iraq - it's the Atlantic partnership which is at stake.

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.

One of the enduring mysteries of America's occupation of Iraq is why a nation that so little relishes peacekeeping nonetheless refuses to turn the job over to the United Nations.

Addressing global resentment cannot be put off. If we do not learn to use our predominant power with great restraint, we will antagonize the world.

Community means engaging constructively with like-minded nations to build strong, sustaining institutions and alliances - and bringing emerging powers into this community so future conflict becomes less likely.

Attempts to settle crises by unilateral sanctions outside the framework of U.N. Security Council decisions threaten international peace and stability. Such attempts are counterproductive and contradict the norms and principles of international law.

There are big issues, like the reform of the Security Council. These kinds of questions are something the President of the General Assembly must keep his eye on.

China and the United States have major influence in international affairs and shoulder important responsibilities in upholding world peace and promoting common development.

I think U.N. organizations are important organizations. They exist for good reasons. And we also admit that there is room for us to improve the way we do business. The WHO will be a very positive and proactive partner in the overall U.N. reform, which is also important.

Time and again, when member states and the governments are faced with an insoluble problem, and they're under pressure to do something, that something usually ends up being referred to the U.N.

The United Nations remains our most important global actor. These days we are continuously reminded of the enormous responsibility of the Security Council to uphold international peace and stability.

The United Nations has a critical role to play in promoting stability, security, democracy, human rights, and economic development. The UN is as relevant today as at any time in its history, but it needs reform.

The United Nations system is still the best instrument for making the world less fragile.

When the big powers are in agreement, the U. N. performs. When they aren't, the U. N. is paralyzed.

Without the U. N., world politics is inconceivable.

International policy does not aim at exploiting local, specific conditions to widen zones of influence and create difficulties for another country. The goal of international policy is to insure universal fulfillment of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" and to prevent a sharpening of international tensions and a strengthening of militarist and nationalist tendencies.

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

The day is coming when no single nation, however powerful, can undertake by itself to keep the peace outside its borders.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

U.S. national security interests are best served when the United Nations effectively fulfills this core purpose.

It is important to ask ourselves, as citizens, whether a world power can provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety.

There is, and there will be, an increasing demand for a principled global security provider, for a superpower that believes in multilateralism and cooperation.

Putin responds to threats, to illegal sanctions, and to incessant propaganda with statements that governments need to respect each other's national interests and to work together for common benefit. No politician in the West speaks in this way.