Rand Paul Quotes

I do not applaud our quitting the League [of Nations]. The people act as if by withdrawing we have achieved something great …. This shows the shallowness of thought of the Japanese public.

Kneejerk interventionism or kneejerk isolationism is the wrong course for Britain.

Americans understand that our security is enhanced when the United States is trusted and respected in the world.

I don’t talk to countries that exhibit bad behavior.

I should drag in the United States.

…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.

We’re not the world’s policeman. Nor the world’s judge, jury and executioner.

Making the case for sustained U. S. [world] leadership is not always easy. Unilateralism or isolationism often make for better sound bites.

Finally we are a nation with some conscience. It means alliances are extremely important when they're based on a national interest. We have to have the ability to sustain our presence within those alliances.

I think Bush was seen as someone who was disentangling America from the connections that it had with the outside world, that it found encumbering for domestic purposes.

Obama's foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.

Isolationism is over.

Taking a principled and consistent stance over Iraq has attracted much criticism from our detractors and opponents.

Unilateral preemption should not in any way be the model for how we conduct international relations.

I would never play any role in anything that involves the United Nations for obvious reasons.

The principles that should guide American foreign policy are simple: the world is safer when America leads, only strength ensures peace and freedom, and America must stand with its allies and challenge its adversaries.

The real danger to Britain is a foreign policy that is isolationist in Europe and therefore weak in the rest of the world.

I think that the president of Iran has the authority wherever which - where - wherever the national interests of the country are involved and, when it is necessary and expedient and required to speak and talk with others in order to promote the rights of its nation, that the president can take that initiative.

It is one thing to be against unilateralism and against nonhumanitarian interventionism - but it is quite another thing to be against humanitarian interventionism.

Unfortunately, the real focus in this country has not been on the rest of the world. It's been on our own issues and our own problems. Fair enough. But it means that our simple hopes that everything will just work out abroad aren't really coming to pass.

In critical ways, Obama has reversed not just Bush policy but every president's approach to the world since the Second World War, save for that of his soulmate Jimmy Carter.

The United Nations has become a place where many countries seek to achieve a lynching of the United States by resolution.

It is like our foreign policy has attention deficit disorder.

Look, I think the notion that there's a dogma or doctrine of foreign policy that gives you a textbook recipe for how to react to all situations is really nonsense.

I think that all countries that participate in multilateral institutions see the institutions as a way of advancing what they view as their national interests and they see in many cases multi-lateral institution as the best way to do that.