Gerrit Smith Quotes

American foreign policy must uphold the sanctity of international treaties. That is the cornerstone on which all relations between nations must rest.

I want to make clear, in the most emphatic way, that the government of Mexico and the Mexican people do not have to accept measures that, in a unilateral way, one government wants to impose on another. That we are not going to accept.

Nations, like individuals in a state of nature, are equal and independent, possessing certain rights and owing certain duties to each other.

The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests.

If the United States is treating Afghanistan as a sovereign country it has to prove it.

Nobody will be allowed to use Pakistan soil for any form of aggression toward any friend or foe.

Insofar as international law is observed, it provides us with stability and order and with a means of predicting the behavior of those with whom we have reciprocal legal obligations.

Turkey wants a policy of engagement exactly like President Obama's new approach. Policy of engagement, less confrontation, less tense attitude, especially in the region.

Poor Wilson did not understand that a frontier which is not defended with bayonets, force and honor cannot be secured by any other principle.

Every government is in some respects a problem for every other government.

Peru will not sign any agreement that impedes it from submitting any county’s citizens to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Peru rejects pressure from any country on its foreign policy.

No country can be expected to make peace with a nation that denies its right to exist.

Governments interfere in the affairs of each other, when they conceive their own peace is endangered.

How can we expect other nations to respect our law if we don't respect theirs?

All foreign policy is the intervention of one nation's domestic politics into another nation's domestic politics.

Foreign policy is the most constraining form of policy-making

...In practice it is found that International Law is always on the side of strong battalions...It is puerile...to apply to the dealings of a nation with its neighbor's territory the morality which would be applicable to two individuals possessing adjoining property, and protected from mutual wrong by a law superior to both.

I want to set up a warm and fruitful dialogue. I see that there is no trust between upper level politicians of Turkey and Armenia, but there is trust between the people. People of both countries come together frequently anyways.

Probably no more extraordinary proposition ever was made by a President to the American people than that our Government should agree to submit questions of difference with other nations to a self-perpetuating judicial tribunal, and one in the selection of whose judges we had no voice.

I do think America has made it quite clear that it is in the interest both of America and China to avoid situations in which they will be pushed toward a collision.

We have always been prepared to negotiate with the U.S. government everything that has to do with bilateral relations, on a basis of the strictest mutual respect for the sovereign rights of each country. We will never try to ask the government of the United States to change its economic and political system.

We want the U.S. to have constructive and stable relations with China. That makes it much easier for us. Then we don't have to choose sides.

Well, I think both Russia and China have a very strong aversion to interference in internal affairs.

Friendly governments do not act so as to undermine the national security of their friends, and do not presume to know better than their friends how they should contend with the many challenges they face. The Swedish government would do well to rethink its intention to act in this way towards its friend Israel.

America will honor our treaty obligations.