Li Peng Quotes

I very much hope that the United States will finally... realise that they can no longer act as the prosecutor, the judge, and the executioner in every part of the world and that they need to cooperate to resolve issues.

Multilateralism is the democracy of international society.

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.

We have to acknowledge and discuss with citizens that Germany needs to take on more responsibility. One of the questions is, 'Can we keep a functioning international order?'

Like other countries in the world, China must uphold its own sovereignty, territorial integrity and development interests. At the same time, we are willing to properly handle differences and disagreements in state-to-state relations.

We shouldn't discuss the world of tomorrow in terms of becoming a balance to the United States. The real issue is whether the United States will define herself as part of the U.N. system-or not.

I don't know that there is much the United States can do except work with the international community.

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.

But I would say if the Security Council is only relevant if it agrees with the United States, then we have come a long way in a direction that I do not like very much.

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

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

If governments do not want to work with the U.N. and the international organizations, there is a limit to what you can do. And there is also a limit to patience.

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.

Multilateralism may be little more than a polite way of camouflaging what is in practice unilateralism with allies.

All foreign policy is the intervention of one nation's domestic politics into another nation's domestic politics.

People think that it only takes an American decision to solve this or that problem [in foreign affairs].

I worked at the United Nations.

We need a relevant and efficient United Nations.

U.S. academics and Upper East Side New Yorkers like to think of the United Nations as a place where foreign ambassadors have intellectual discussions about power and world peace.

The notion that the U.S. can impose its will unilaterally on the World Bank reflects a fundamental misunderstanding about how multilateral organizations should work.

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

The fact is that co-operation between independent countries - to our mutual advantage - is the way of the modern world.

It's very liberating for me to realize that I don't have to step up to the plate with a plot that involves the U.N. Security Council.

It is not just for a few states to sit and veto global approvals.

As long as the problem of world reconstruction remains the center of interest for all nations, blocs having similar attitudes will form and operate even within the League itself.