Antonio Guterres Quotes

The United Nations should serve as a forum to address our common challenges. And it must also be a space to generate solutions for mutual benefit. This is the very essence of what the United Nations is about. We must position the multilateral system to better serve our people and deliver on their aspirations.

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.

International cooperation, multilateralism is indispensable.

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.

I really do hope that the Millennium Summit gives new impetus to the work of the United Nations.

The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.

It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the imperatives of global environmental cooperation.

The U.N. brings everybody together. And without it, we can't deal with Ebola or terrorism or climate change. But it's 70 years old. It's tired. It's acquired a lot of bad habits. And often it feels like only new bad habits get added and old bad habits don't get taken away.

And being in the EU has given Britain a stronger voice in the world. Britain leads in Europe, from trade to climate change, from good governance to debt relief for the poorest nations, and in turn Europe helps to lead the world.

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

If we want the next generation to be born into a better world, we only have one option. And that is strong multilateralism, with the U.N. System at its core.

Foreign relations should involve human rights, workers' rights, and environmental protection.

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.

I have concluded that the U.N. can do a few things well.

Since taking office, President Obama has worked to restore a positive vision of American leadership in the world - leadership defined, not by the threats and dangers that we will oppose, but by the security, opportunity and dignity that America advances in partnership with people around the world.

It may surprise people to know that I advocate the reform of the United Nations, not its abolishment.

On big issues like war in Iraq, but in many other issues they simply must be multilateral. There's no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way.

I mean that the time where we need International agreement more than ever on the environment and the rest, poverty we are breaking up our International Institutions and the rule of law and Tony Blair is part of it.

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.

Whereas nationalism still seeks power, honour, and glory through means that endanger other countries, patriotism knows that a country's strength and honour can only be permanently safeguarded through concourse with other countries. And whereas nationalism scoffs at the idea of international laws and regulations, patriotism seeks to create such.

The U.N.'s impartiality allows it to negotiate and operate in some of the toughest places in the world. And time and again, studies have shown that U.N. peacekeeping is far more effective and done with far less money than what any government can do on its own.

Global challenges require collective responses.

If the United Nations does not attempt to chart a course for the world's people in the first decades of the new millennium, who will?

Peace and security of our planet must be based on the collective action of all nations, not a few, however powerful they may be.