Daniel Patrick Moynihan Quotes

Many global solutions still require the binding force and permanence that only treaties can provide.

There was an implicit conviction that the UN would be stronger than the sum of its constituent member-states.

All countries, big or small, strong or weak, are equal members of the United Nations.

International Law

Multilateralism is the democracy of international society.

When America rejected the League, she had deliberately chosen to rest solely upon treaties with the sanction of public opinion alone…

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.

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

As the highest ranking American official in the United Nations organization, I came to understand thoroughly that the national constitutional processes of the member states define the status of territories under their sovereignty.

The nations must be organized internationally and induced to enter into partnership, subordinating in some measure national sovereignty to worldwide institutions and obligations.

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

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.

If the savior of man would revisit and declare himself for a League of Nations, I would be opposed to it.

To the creators of the League of Nations who originated the first serious efforts to a better understanding between nations

World government is a premature concept at this stage. We are moving more and more into supernational arrangements, but it is too early still.

A new phrase, the United Nations, slipped into the world's vocabulary. Editorial writers and military commentators used it glibly. And last week they began to wonder what, exactly, it meant—that pact by which 26 nations bound themselves fortnight ago not to make a separate peace with their Axis enemies

The United States does not feel any need to consult with anybody … except when it suits them.

…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.

The mobilization of world opinion and methods of negotiation should be developed and used by every nation in order to strengthen the United Nations. Then if we are forced into war, it will be because there has been no way to prevent it through negotiation and the mobilization of world opinion. In which case we should have the voluntary support of many nations, which is far better than the decision of one nation alone, or even of a few nations.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

I am glad that Zimbabwe and China speak the same language on many issues. We share the same conviction that only a fair, just, and non-prescriptive world order, based on the principles of the charter of the United Nations, can deliver the development we all need.

Britain must be the champion of international law.

We in Britain do not have the same capabilities as the United States, but we are members of the United Nations Security Council. And we take our obligations and duties deriving from that very seriously.

There is simply no limitation on the realistic power of the U.N. over us.

If the U.N. is ineffective, the whole concept of multilateralism will collapse.