F. W. de Klerk Quotes

If every component part of the nation claims the right of self-determination for itself, there is no one nation and there is no independence.

Sovereignty was not an issue in this campaign. The sovereignty numbers that were there before the campaign are still there. Sovereignty is as alive as it was. But there is work to do to convince Quebecers.

We don't want to deal with a separatist party.

To exercise self-determination through secession is to blow apart the union, to pit peoples against one another and to sow discord, bloodshed and death. This is precisely the goal of secessionists in all republics.

If we allow Catalonia - and it is none of our business - to separate, others will do the same. I do not want that.

When you have people in a geographical area who do not want to be a part of a country, you cannot keep them in that country forever.

You must not expect the central government of any country to encourage separatism.

Every nation, civilized or primitive, sees its land as its national home, where it wants to be the sole landlord forever. Such a nation will never willingly consent to new landlords or even to partnership.

The country was made without lines of demarcation and it is nobody's business to create them.

Each secession destroys the unity of a nation.

Some civil wars are caused by one group within a country seeking its independence, while in other cases, the civil war itself leads one group or another to seek its independence as the solution to its problems.

The U.S. actions in Kosovo - carving out an independent state based on ethnicity from within a sovereign nation - provided the precedent for Russia to carve Crimea out of Ukraine.

The pro-independence movement has all different social sensibilities - from left to right, including pro-liberal, socialist and communist.

There are both things in international law: the principle of territorial integrity and right to self-determination.

So as far as Serbia is concerned, it does not have the right to influence the privatization or to claim any property, because Kosovo is a former member of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

There are lots of nations in the world or national peoples who don't yet have states. They're inside someone else's state and they want a state of their own.

From that moment on, there will be an irreversible process to separate Quebec from Canada.

I want my own country, not against Canada but for Quebec.

If Brazil should decide on separation, let it be under your leadership, since you are bound to respect me, rather than under one of these adventurers.

There will be no annexation of ourselves or our territory to an independent Quebec without our consent.

Canada is not another [American] State, and we don't want to be one.

The right of a State to secede is not an open or debatable question

If the States cannot live together in harmony, under the auspices of such a Government as exists, and in the midst of blessings, such as have been the fruits of it, what is the prospect threatened by the abolition of a Common Government, with all the rivalships collisions and animosities, inseparable from such an event.

This object we expect to obtain, by a total separation from Mexico, as an independent community, a new republic, or by becoming a state of the United States.

Whether we remain in one confederacy or form into Atlantic and Mississippi Confederacies I believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the Western Confederacy will be as much our children as those of the Eastern part.