Richard Grenell Quotes

When I was UN ambassador, the French were monitoring me.

India seeks to be a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council... things like this don't happen automatically, you need constant dialogue and discussion with the world.

In the United States, there is a broadly shared view that the U.N. is one of many potential instruments to advance U.S. issues, and we have to decide whether a particular issue is best done through the U.N. or best done through some other mechanism.

I spend every day up at the United Nations where I have to interact with 192 other countries. I know how well the United States is viewed.

The U.N. can be very frustrating and at times impotent, but it can also be a valuable forum for discussion and resolution of world problems. We should not walk away from it just because it's failed to live up to its promise.

Legislation that would withhold funding for the United Nations is fundamentally flawed in concept and practice, sets us back, is self-defeating, and doesn't work.

Probably the most useful thing I can do as secretary of state is to assist the president in adapting and renewing the transnational institutions that were created after World War II.

I have been in America only once since Mr. Clinton became your president - as a speaker at the United Nations.

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

We saw there was no consensus in the U.N. Security Council. It was impossible, due to the threatened veto by some.

If the U.N. didn't exist, we'd be inventing it right now.

The failure of the United Nations - My failure is maybe, in retrospective, that I was not enough aggressive with the members of the Security Council.

My diplomatic position will not consist of going and kneeling down in front of George Bush.

If the United States leads a multinational force into Iraq without United Nations backing, Canada should fight beside its neighbour. We've gone from being a middle power to a muddle power on this one.

The matter of international relations is very subtle and exquisite.

There is a sense in which the United States ambassador speaks to the United States, as well as for the United States. I have always seen my role as a thermostat rather than a thermometer. So I'm going to be actively working... for my own concerns. I have always had people advise me on what to say, but never on what not to say.

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

Everybody likes to go to Geneva. I used to do it for the Law of the Sea conferences and you'd find those potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva

No country can dictate its laws to the world.

No Secretary of State can give constant personal care to more than a few problems among the global abundance.

When the President picks up the phone and calls the Prime Minister, what does it mean to be an ambassador?

If we start seeing one ambassador I don’t know how we’re going to avoid seeing the other 113 …. I don’t see what mileage we get in seeing 80 African ambassadors.

Many nations want the United Nations Secretary General to be less general and more secretary.

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

The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail, and to be seen to fail. If there is something you are expected to do, but don't want to do, or even have done for you, you can safely appeal to the UN in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.