Daniel Bell Quotes

The Nation is ceasing to be the leading form off the world’s structure; organizations transcending national boundaries are becoming more and more numerous and effective.

For virtually every area of public policy there is a globalist proposal, consistent with the overall objective of reducing individual nation-state autonomy, particularly that of the United States?

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.

I believe that national sovereignties will shrink in the face of universal interdependence.

I've always made it clear that I do not believe that global government is either necessary or feasible.

Here we encounter two conflicting concepts with which we must come to grips in our time: the idea of national solidarity and the idea of international cooperation.

The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism.

I wouldn't say the nation-state is dead, but the Sovereignty has been greatly circumscribed ... even for a country as large as the U. S.

National boundaries are blurred by advanced communications and global commerce, and by the decisions of States to yield some sovereign prerogatives to larger, common political associations.

I think we should be less dependent on the outdated concept we call countries.

Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean share a cultural heritage based on centuries of common history. And what is more, we share the same values and world view. We believe in a world order that is based on cooperation, on regionalism, on multilateralism.

To contrast national solidarity and international cooperation as two opposites seems foolish to me.

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.

Today we stand on a bridge leading from the territorial state to the world community. Politically, we are still governed by the concept of the territorial state; economically and technically, we live under the auspices of worldwide communications and worldwide markets.

On the contrary. Internationalism also recognizes, by its very name, that nations do exist. It simply limits their scope more than one-sided nationalism does.

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.

The idea that you surrender your identity when you relinquish national powers is unhelpful. No, indeed, precisely the opposite is the case: if done in an intelligent way, you attain the sovereignty to better solve national problems in cooperation with others.

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.

In a shrinking world, the absence of order among nations is becoming less and less tolerable.

The international body must have the institutions and powers it needs to do what it is created to do; in other words it must be boldly and openly set up as a super-state on a level above the national sovereignties, and that, in turn, means that the Member States must have accepted in advance as much limitation and subordination of their particular sovereignties as this superior sovereign power requires.

Nations, like small communities, are in danger of becoming provincial, and must become so, unless they exchange commodities, theories, thoughts, and ideals. Isolation is the soil of ignorance, and ignorance is the soil of egotism; and nations, like individuals who live apart, mistake provincialism for perfection, and hatred of all other nations for patriotism.

Multilateralism is regarded as somehow un-American, a trick by which foreigners seek to sap the strength and authority of the United States.

Unilateralism and isolationism are ideological twins.

Nations have lost their old omnipotence; the patriotic tie does not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go and live where we will.

The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations - great or small - to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to be a part of the twentieth century.