Frederick Buechner Quotes

I have loved but one flag and cannot share that affection with the mongrel banner designed for the League [of Nations.]

We have absolutely abandoned any idea of nationalist loyalty. We are deliberately putting a world order before our loyalty to our own country.

I am a subject of the British Crown, but whenever I have to choose between the interests of England and Canada it is manifest to me that the interests of my country are identical with those of the United States of America.

The idea that you surrender your identity when you relinquish national powers is unhelpful. No, indeed, precisely the opposite is the case: if done in an intelligent way, you attain the sovereignty to better solve national problems in cooperation with others.

Here we encounter two conflicting concepts with which we must come to grips in our time: the idea of national solidarity and the idea of international cooperation.

The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism.

No one should abandon his county's interest upon entering the portals of the United Nations.

Show me a man who respects the rights of all countries, but is ready to defend his own against them all, and I will show you a man who is both a nationalist and an internationalist.

Nations have lost their old omnipotence; the patriotic tie does not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go and live where we will.

The "State" was substituted for humanity; cosmopolitan gave way to nationalism.

The nation-state has become too small for the big problems of life and too big for the small problems.

Nationalism is the most powerful force on earth today.

Anti-Western resentment and Russian patriotism appear particularly pronounced in Putin’s personality and life experiences, but a different Russian government not run by former KGB types would still be confronted with the challenge of weakness vis-à-vis the West and the desire for a special role in the world. Russia’s foreign policy orientation, in other words, is as much a condition as a choice. But if Russian elites could somehow redefine their sense of exceptionalism and put aside their unwinnable competition with the West, they could set their country on a less costly, more promising course.

I am strictly against a European superstate.

The elites have become international, and they've ceased to have a primary loyalty to the nation-state.

I think we should be less dependent on the outdated concept we call countries.

I think there is something about countries and nations that is hard to define. And, in fact, that's probably why we create such massive boundaries - because it's so slippery where they begin and where they end.

The United States is not a nation of people which in the long run allows itself to be pushed around.

The sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions.

Nations are in effect ceding portions of their sovereignty to the international community and beginning to create a new system of international environmental governance.

World Government is not only possible, it is inevitable; and when it comes, it will appeal to patriotism in its truest sense,in its only sense, the patriotism of humans who love their national heritages so deeply that they wish to preserve them in safety for the common good.

Anybody who really wants to abolish war must resolutely declare himself in favor of his own country's resigning a portion of sovereignty in place of international institutions.

Now therefore, be it Resolved by the Fiftieth Annual Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, That we hereby declare that we are unalterably opposed to any program which would entail the surrender of any part of the sovereignty of the United States of America in favor of a world government.

Sovereignty must be redefined if states are to cope with globalisation.

Globalisation thus implies that sovereignty...needs to become weaker.