Dag Hammarskjold Quotes

The League of Nations seemed to us the embryo of a future international organization; and for the struggle against the internationales, whether Socialistic or Communist, it offered the best possible instrument. It was a great blow to us when the United States refused to become a party to these hopes.

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

The United Nations represents not a final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive stage. Therefore its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization.

The United Nations is actually a mid-20th century institution and much weaker than it was when it was originally created, because governments themselves are less capable of implementing the kind of promises or programs that they have put forward.

As we have seen, the wireless and the airplane have made the world so small and nations so dependent on each other that the only alternative to war is the United States of the World.

Like Canada, we very much wanted the United Nations to be a relevant and effective body. But once those efforts failed, we no longer saw things from a multilateral perspective. For us, now, it is much more basic than that. It is about family.

Now, the United Nations is an organization that I believe was founded with good intentions. As a matter of fact, a prominent Tennessean named Cordell Hull was very involved with it.

Consider in 1945, when the United Nations was first formed, there were something like fifty-one original member countries. Now the United Nations is made up of 193 nations, but it follows the same structure in which five nations control it. It's an anti-democratic structure.

It is a commonplace that the League of Nations is not yet-what its most enthusiastic protagonists intended it to be.

If the U.N. didn't exist, we'd be inventing it right now.

The UN's unique legitimacy flows from a universal perception that it pursues a larger purpose than the interests of one country or a small group of countries.

We must recognize that as the dominant power in the world we have a special responsibility. In addition to protecting our national interests, we must take the leadership in protecting the common interests of humanity.

We believe in multilateral organization. It's very important for countries like Canada to be great promoters of multilateral organizations. We have only one superpower, it happens to be a friend of ours, but to maintain the equilibrium in the world it is very important that we have these multilateral organizations like the UN or others.

If the savior of man would revisit and declare himself for a League of Nations, I would be opposed to it.

The world state is inherent in the United Nations as an oak tree is in an acorn.

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

…though the American government did much to encourage the organs of the League, the fact that it stood aside, sharing neither the rights nor the duties of the League powers, was a fatal handicap to joint action.

U.S. academics and Upper East Side New Yorkers like to think of the United Nations as a place where foreign ambassadors have intellectual discussions about power and world peace.

Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective- a new world order-can emerge... We are now in sight of a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders.

The United Nations is our conscience. If it succeeds it is our success. If it fails it is our failure.

I have long believed that the only way peace can be achieved is through world government.

My vision of a 'new world order' foresees a United Nations with a revitalized peacekeeping function.

The global work of the United Nations is not without reason compared to that of a family - striving for a common goal in concert with all members for a better future.

I thought that the United Nations is a creature of the five super-powers who were given veto powers. I don't like veto powers at all.

The United Nations offers international legitimacy in what we might do.