Aristide Briand Quotes

Just think of what Woodrow Wilson stood for: he stood for world government. He wanted an early United Nations, League of Nations. But it was the conservatives, Republicans, that stood up against him.

It is a commonplace that the League of Nations is not yet-what its most enthusiastic protagonists intended it to be.

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

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.

There is no reason why agreement on particular points should not be both possible and advantageous to the so-called neutrals and to one or more of the blocs, either existing or in the process of formation, within the League of Nations.

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

…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 United Nations is really the League of Nations 2.0

The League of Nations seemed to us the embryo of a future international organization; and for the struggle against the internationales, whether Socialistic or Communist, it offered the best possible instrument. It was a great blow to us when the United States refused to become a party to these hopes.

War might be instantly banished from Europe, would its nations regard themselves as one great society, and by mutual consent, erect a court for the trial and decisions of their respective disputes.

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

The United Nations, whose membership comprises almost all the states in the world, is founded on the principle of the equal worth of every human being.

The liberal vision of America is that it should be less arrogant, less unilateral, more internationalist. In Obama's view, America would subsume itself under a fuzzy internationalism in which the international community, which I think is a fiction, governs itself through the U.N.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

I also believe that member states of the United Nations should live up their obligations to pay their dues.

All in all, the League of Nations is not inevitably bound, as some maintain from time to time, to degenerate into an impotent appendage of first one, then another of the competing great powers.

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

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

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.

The utter incompetence of the U.N. is literally incomprehensible.

The Covenant of the League of Nations had envisaged sponsoring only the protection of certain categories of men: national minorities and populations of territories controlled by other countries.

The United Nations has a lot of capacity on the ground.

The present U.N. must be annihilated by our power. That is the stage for Communists. We must make a new U.N.

We would have to invent the U.N. if we did not have it, which is not an original thought.

The League is dead; long live the United Nations.