David Miliband Quotes

In a complex and challenging time, the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting — yet it ends in danger and decline.

A waning United States would likely be more nationalistic, more defensive about its national identity, more paranoid about its homeland security, and less willing to sacrifice resources for the sake of others' development.

There's a tendency in many politicians to become inward-looking, more protectionist, more nationalistic and more defensive, in the bad sense of the word.

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.

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.

Isolationism has been a calamity.

Unilateralism and isolationism are ideological twins.

I do not applaud our quitting the League [of Nations]. The people act as if by withdrawing we have achieved something great …. This shows the shallowness of thought of the Japanese public.

How pathetic indeed are the efforts of those leaders of human institutions who, in utter disregard of the spirit of the age, are striving to adjust national processes, suited to the ancient days of self-contained nations, to an age which must either achieve the unity of the world … or perish.

The reality is when you make 'America First' a bumper sticker and pump it overseas, what you're telling them is 'America Only'.

I do not want Britain to turn its back on Europe or the rest of the world.

Isolationism is not leadership.

We don't want an America that is closed to the world. What we want is a world that is open to America.

Europe must learn to live in and with the world, not to dominate it nor to assume it is superior or more virtuous.

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

Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is, 'We are above that now. We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something.' I mean, in a way, Obama's standing above the country, above - above the world. He's sort of God. He's going to bring all different sides together.

The decisive factor for the future of Europe - and before all things, for the 'restoration' of Europe - will be whether political thought and national feelings are influenced by the reality of internationalism.

The Eurasian union is a project meant to preserve the identities of nations and the historic Eurasian community in the new century, in a new world.

Isolationism is over.

Any nation that refuses to hold intercourse with other nations must expect to be excluded from this family.

China has no desire to replace Western imperialism in Asia with an Oriental imperialism or isolationism of its own or anyone else.

I am not a British isolationist. I don't just want a better deal for Britain. I want a better deal for Europe too.

America believes what's good for us is good for the world. It's very difficult to understand that that's not necessarily true.

We don't mind having sanctions banning us from Europe. We are not Europeans.

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.