Toomas Hendrik Ilves Quotes

It is not just for a few states to sit and veto global approvals.

The statesmen still say that we should not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations and yet it is not possible any longer not to interfere, even when we do not mean to do so.

Nations are not thugs. They are bodies of intelligent people.

So, the international community are all the countries that are important: the United States definitely everywhere; the European Union because it is very important, and also, they do show a great deal of international responsibility; and then the local players.

What we need now is a Treaty of the World not a Treaty of Rome.

It's dismaying to see the unilateralism that the government is doing.

My point here is I think international pressures of our acting unilaterally again are going to be such that the administration will say, well, we just can't take this on now.

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

In these days of intimate relations, of economic stress and of intense desire to protect national interests and advance national opportunity, the treatment of questions which, from a legal standpoint, are domestic, often seriously affects international relations. The principle, each nation for itself to the full extent of its powers, is the principle of war, not of peace.

If governments do not want to work with the U.N. and the international organizations, there is a limit to what you can do. And there is also a limit to patience.

Intimately concerned as we are with the system of Europe, it does not follow that we are therefore called upon to mix ourselves on every occasion, with a restless and meddling activity, in the concerns of the nations which surround us.

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

… make Englishmen cognizant of the processes through which the progressive destinies of Europe are being worked out, so that whenever European Affairs may call for interference, they may be in no doubt as to the course to be pursued.

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.

International institutions like the UN can only be as effective as its members allow it to be.

I think overall our national security is strengthened if we are able to make the decisions that we need and the alliances that we believe in outside the current structures of the European Union.

If the U.N. is ineffective, the whole concept of multilateralism will collapse.

We always say we have wishful thinking that the Unites States would be unbiased, respect the international law, doesn't interfere in other countries around the world, and of course to stop supporting terrorists in Syria.

In my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world.

If the whole of the 20th century has taught us anything, it has taught us that borders must be respected.

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

World government is a premature concept at this stage. We are moving more and more into supernational arrangements, but it is too early still.

It’s not a dictatorship in the United States. But it is dictatorial to the rest of the world. Who’s going to say no?

You cannot have individual foreign policy. You cannot have celebrity foreign policy.

Nations are at liberty to use their own resources in such manner, and to apply them to such purposes as they may deem best, provided they do not violate the perfect rights of other nations, nor endanger their safety, nor infringe the indispensable duties of humanity