Joseph Addison Quotes

Great powers reserve the right to police bad actors in their neighborhoods.

The day of small nations has long passed away. The day of Empires has come.

Every government is in some respects a problem for every other government.

I think that there is a limit on how far you can export democracy.

The world consists of, and is divided by, sovereign states which recognize no superior authority.

Just as the United States doesn't like others to take charge, other countries also don't like the United States to play a dominant role in the United Nations.

Perhaps we have already intervened too much in the affairs of other peoples.

A government, to afford the needful protection and exercise proper care for the welfare of a people, must have homogeneity in its constituents. It is this necessity which has divided the human race into separate nations, and finally has defeated the grandest efforts which conquerors have made to give unlimited extent to their domain.

The centuries old Westphalian state system has never resolved the tension between the principle of the sovereign equality of states and the idea that great powers enjoy certain privileges and bear special responsibilities.

The organization of independent nations which has followed the disappearance of the Holy Roman Empire is in the main the outgrowth of that progress in civilization which leads peoples to seek the liberty of local self-government according to their own ideas.

Small countries such as Belgium would be well-advised to rally to the side of the strong if the wish to retain their independence.

In a world in which the United States does less, whatever set of calculations, other countries will tend to calculate - to move in one of two ways. Either they will assuage or, to use a more loaded term, appease the strongest power in the neighborhood with all the consequences of that, or they will determine to take matters into their own hands.

Nations, like individuals in a state of nature, are equal and independent, possessing certain rights and owing certain duties to each other.

The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.

The predominant yardstick of your government is not human rights but national interests.

Multi- polarisation has become an inevitable trend in the process of shaping a global political pattern and has been widely welcomed by the international community as it reflects the common interests and aspiration of the overwhelming majority of countries.

There will always be nations. The United States will last a long, long time, I believe. France and Germany and Japan, China, other nations, they're going to exist. But they're losing their significance and ability to deal with certain matters.

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.

All treaties between great states cease to be binding when they come in conflict with the struggle for existence.

Global conditions are far too complex to be able to imagine that they could ever be really controlled by one power.

If there is one great power, and the great power has taken upon itself the right to preempt and is choosing for itself when and in what circumstances it's going to do that, obviously it leads people in the rest of the world to wonder how far this doctrine extends.

What makes the United Nations an appropriate source of legitimacy for intervention is that it is the only place where the claims of the strong are put through the test of justification in front of the weak.

A world in which others controlled the course of their own development, would be a world in which the American system would be seriously endangered.

Administering another country is always a very tricky proposition.

Great Powers must recognize that effective nation building requires not only the heart of the humanitarian but also the hubris of an imperialist.