Juan Enriquez Quotes

No foreign Power can consistently yield Comfort to Rebels, or enter into any kind of Treaty with these Colonies until they [the Colonies] declare themselves free and independent.

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

… half-formed pseudo nations

The fact that we are smaller and weaker does not mean that we have less sovereignty than you.

Borders most often result from wars or peace treaties that end wars.

Some civil wars are caused by one group within a country seeking its independence, while in other cases, the civil war itself leads one group or another to seek its independence as the solution to its problems.

Nations which don't find their national identities will be preyed upon by other nations.

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

In particular, the efforts to reestablish peace after the World War have been directed toward the formation of states and the regulation of their frontiers according to a consciously national program.

No new state is ever fully ready for independence ..

If Brazil should decide on separation, let it be under your leadership, since you are bound to respect me, rather than under one of these adventurers.

When you have people in a geographical area who do not want to be a part of a country, you cannot keep them in that country forever.

No nation is ever ready for independence. How many Western states, including the United States of America, were ready for independence.

Throughout history, countries have sought to expand ….Today, the goal of most wars is too make countries smaller rather than larger.

Nations are equal in respect to each other, and entitled to claim equal consideration for their rights, whatever may be their relative dimensions or strength, or however greatly they may differ in government, religion, or manners. This perfect equality, and entire independence of all distinct states, is a fundamental principle of public law. It is a necessary consequence of this equality that each nation has a right to govern itself as it may think proper, and no one nation is entitled to dictate a form of government or religion, or a course of internal policy, to another. No state is entitled to take cognizance or notice of the domestic administration of another state, or of what passes within it as between the government and its own subjects

Just as every girl should have a husband, preferably her own, so every culture must have its state, preferably its own.

No nation is so lost to pride as to submit the conduct of its internal affairs to the arbitrament of foreign powers.

There is no nation on the earth that wants, for its security, to depend on anybody else.

When the President [Woodrow Wilson] talks of self-determination, what unit has he in mind. Does he mean a race, a territorial area, a community? … It will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will I fear cost thousands of lives. In the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an idealist who failed to realize the danger until it was too late.

The Labour party believes in the right of peoples to govern themselves, and to enjoy a way of life which they themselves decide upon. We concede that right to Russia. We concede that right to Germany, and it is because we are claiming it for ourselves, and Germany denies it to us, that we are at war with Germany

The State of Israel is a state that was formed before the people were even in it. You have to understand: In India, in Burma, in Pakistan - all of the people were already there. Their problem was for the English to leave so they could be independent.

Anybody who respects democracy has to keep in mind that never in this country was a separate state carved out without a resolution being passed in the assembly.

Nationalism is a central ideology for people who are trying to establish their own states in which they can play a dominant role.

India's coming into her own will mean every nation doing likewise.

A Russian should rejoice if Poland, the Baltic Provinces, Finland, Armenia, should be separated, freed from Russia; so with an Englishman in regard to Ireland, India and other possessions; and each should help to do this, because the greater the state, the more wrong and cruel is its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded. Therefore, if we really wish to be what we profess to be, we must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening, and help this forward with all our might.