Global Involvement Quotes

As long as Americans believe that their country has vital interests everywhere on earth, they will behave the same.

Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total... because it may well involve the whole world.

The United States … has never been isolated, never can be isolated, and has no desire to be isolated. The people of the United States are not only ready but willing and desirous to help their fellow-men, especially those of western civilization, in any way that is possible.

I will call not just on Israel, but on the Palestinians, on the Arab States, and the international community to join us in this effort, because the burden of making hard choices must not be Israel’s alone.

Until the attack on Pearl Harbor, isolationism was an important, even dominant strand in U.S. politics. After the Second World War, this strand disappeared, smothered by the widespread and bipartisan conviction that the United States needed to stay engaged with the world to prevent future crises.

I don't want to close the door that if any of us were president of the United States that we would sit idly by and watch something like the Holocaust go down. I don't want to close the door on the United States involving themselves and putting a stop to that. Can we spend money on that? Yeah, I think so.

I think if we're going to send messages to the stars then it needs a great deal of thought that it's something that should involve the entire not only scientific community, but the entire world community. We need to think very carefully indeed.

The world has fundamentally changed. It fundamentally changed when the Berlin Wall came down and the 'evil empire' ceased to exist. We are engaged around the world whether we like it or not.

We find ourselves in places in the world where our interests require, maybe, limited application of force, involved in strange missions, missions difficult to define and state criteria and exit strategies. So it's much more difficult now. It's not that clear.

I want to get more involved with the vineyards I have all over the world and to spend more time with the people who work in them.

Americans are once again looking outward

There's no doubt that our hearts are with the residents of Gaza. We and the whole world are unable to get to a situation in which Gaza can be rehabilitated. There needs to be an international initiative with Israel's participation, in order to bring an end to the enmity against us.

You can be strong without being involved in every single civil war around the world.

We are naturally reluctant as a peace-loving people to reach out to far-away conflicts but, as we know, this conflict has been reaching out to us for months now.

I just started reading lots of books and then called the United Nations and asked if they could educate me. The more I got involved, the more I suddenly began to feel useful as a human being and felt like I was finally living as I should be.

The humanitarian would, of course, have us meddle in foreign affairs as part of his program of world service.

An economically confident America has - since becoming a world power at the start of the 20th century - tended toward global engagement. It is during times of economic stress (1930s, 1970s) that America has become more withdrawn.

As science, of necessity, becomes more involved with itself, so also, of necessity, it becomes more international. I am impressed to know that of the 670 members of this Academy

You know, I wish the world well. I want Iraq to have democracy and the Haitians to have democracy. I want the people of Afghanistan to thrive. Lord knows, we spend enough money there to help them. What about people at home? Isn't that our first responsibility?

It took a world war, between 1914 and 1918, to draw the United States into a deeper and more sustained relationship with the wider world.

After the Cold War, to rally the American people to understand that we had to be a part of solutions. It's one thing to say that we have to run everything, it's another to say we don't want anything to do with it.

A great deal remains to be done in Afghanistan and the jury is out as to whether the international community has the commitment and the patience to see the rebuilding process through.

The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

This is a war for the soul of Islam. And those countries who are opposed to Islam, they are going to have to get deeply involved in a way that is not the case today. We should be supportive of that effort.

There is every prospect that events arising out of our growing foreign investment will present us in the future with decisions involving war and peace, will bring us, whether we like it or not, to concern ourselves with distant causes.