Aníbal Salvador Acevedo Vila Quotes

National boundaries are blurred by advanced communications and global commerce, and by the decisions of States to yield some sovereign prerogatives to larger, common political associations.

We don't need a strongman. But we need a strong country that is not subordinate to Europe.

We are not some small landlocked European country who needs the E.U. to make decisions for us or protect us from competition.

Puerto Rico has two divergent paths forward. After a reasonable transition period, it could become a state. Or it can become a sovereign nation.

As a nation we have the right to decide our own affairs, to mould our own future. This does not pose any danger to anybody. Our nation is fully aware of the responsibility for its own fate in the complicated situation of the contemporary world.

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.

I believe that nationalism is a very strong force, but there are other forces operating; there are tendencies pushing towards a larger picture, especially in Europe, I think; but I still think nationalism is real.

Independence is not a whim or an ambition. It is the necessary condition of our survival as an ethnic group.

True, other countries are helping us. Germany is determined to provide substantial help. So are the Netherlands and other states. But a day will come when we have to count on our own resources.

Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.

My vision is that our country should be integrated in the EU, to transfer a part of our independence there. It is also our duty to do it, if we want to establish trade and a sound economy. This is the vision that I am working on and I will continue to work in the future.

Today in the era of globalization there is no such issue as borders between states of the same nation.

That is why, with optimism instead of fear, all those who want to see Puerto Rico's status resolved should seek the truth about each option, including the upside and the downside of each.

Transferring our sovereignty and decisionmaking power to the WTO, to the United Nations, or any other international body is not in the long-term interests of our people.

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.

I'm supportive of practical nationalism, like the kind we need in Canada to avoid being absorbed into a much larger country. The kind of nationalism I despise as destructive and infantile is really just tribalism writ large.

Instead of saying that globalization is a fact, that it's inevitable, we've also got to demonstrate that while the growing interdependence of the world economy is indeed a fact, it's not uncontrollable.

Like all social theories, internationalism must seek its basis in the economic and technical fields; here are to be found the most profound and the most decisive factors in the development of society.

I've built my homeland, I've even founded my state - in my language.

Our colonies are great and growing nationalities.

All these nations and peoples of Europe and Asia will insist upon their independence and their own cultures.

A commonwealth then is so far independent, as it can plan and provide against oppression by another, and so far dependent on another commonwealth, as it fears that other's power

What is modernity? Is it defending foreign interests, or defending interests of our country?

From Kurdistan to Catalonia to Scotland, from Syria to Chechnya to South Sudan, from indigenous communities in the Andean nations to tribal communities in sub-Saharan Africa, many people are shifting their primary political identities away from the nation-states in which they lived for many generations.

Nationalism is the most powerful force on earth today.