Helen Gahagan Quotes

We no longer live in a bipolar world. The world is interconnected and interdependent. You will have to connect with everybody at the same time. Even if there are two opposing countries, they will have to be friends. Now the times have changed.

We live in an inter-dependent world. An isolated India is not in our interest. Just because we are a large country, we cannot be arrogant and think that we can ignore others. We live in a different era. Terrorism is global and can come from even remote countries. International summits and organizations like WTO take decisions which will bind us and if we are not present in such summits, we may be hurt by the decisions taken.

The world before 1914 was already a world in which the welfare of each individual nation was inextricably bound up with the prosperity of the whole community of nations.

In this age of growing interconnectedness, we understand that turning our backs on the world is simply not an option.

There are very few issues that lie specifically in one region now. Polio in Syria doesn't affect Syria alone. I don't think any issue can ever be isolated into local politics these days, because we all know too much.

We can't return to the 19th century, draw up our drawbridges and say, we don't have anything to do with each other, Germany will not work with the Netherlands, the UK will not work with France. That's ludicrous. We are condemned to work with each other.

The 21st century is significantly different from the 20th century. The old models will not hold anymore. More and more, we are one people on Earth. We need to share our problems.

The age of isolation is gone. And gone are the days in which barbed wire served as demarcation lines, separating and isolating countries from one another. No country can escape looking beyond its boundaries to find the source of the currents which influence how it can live with others.

Country [China] needs to continue opening up and keep connecting. It needs to realize that the world has become one. The old concept of isolation, the idea that you can solve your problems on your own does not work anymore - neither in cultural, economic, nor political terms.

The human race has entered a stage where we are all dependent on each other. No other country or nation should be regarded in total separation from another, let alone pitted against another.

Our countries are weaker: they cannot protect us from imported goods, they can't protect us from climate change, they cannot protect us from epidemics. These things cross borders. But the kind of cooperation that would protect us from those things was completely lacking and because of this there's been a backlash. People feel vulnerable.

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.

Our alliances should be understood as a means to expand our influence, not as a constraint on our power. The expansion of democracy and freedom in the world should be a shared interest and value with all nations.

Global interdependence today means that economic disasters in developing countries could create a backlash on developed countries.

Isolationism is over.

We are now physically, politically, and economically one world and nations so interdependent that the absolute national sovereignty of nations is no longer possible.

Foreign policy is inseparable from domestic policy now. Is terrorism foreign policy or domestic policy? It's both. It's the same with crime, with the economy, climate change.

As we realize that more and more things have global impact, I think we're going to get people increasingly wanting to get away from a purely national interest.

Lest those islands still seem to you too remote in space and time to be relevant to our modern societies, just think about the risks... of our increasing globalization and increasing worldwide economic interdependence.

No country can dictate its laws to the world.

America cannot meet this century's challenges alone; the world cannot meet them without America.

All problems in the world today are multilateral, and all these one-on-one agreements simply aren't going to do it.

We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches

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.

Perfectionism, no less than isolationism or imperialism or power politics, may obstruct the paths to international peace. Let us not forget that the retreat to isolationism a quarter of a century ago was started not by a direct attack against international cooperation but against the alleged imperfections of the peace.