Jody Williams Quotes

We cannot wait for governments to do it all. Globalization operates on Internet time. Governments tend to be slow moving by nature, because they have to build political support for every step.

Whereas nationalism still seeks power, honour, and glory through means that endanger other countries, patriotism knows that a country's strength and honour can only be permanently safeguarded through concourse with other countries. And whereas nationalism scoffs at the idea of international laws and regulations, patriotism seeks to create such.

The day is coming when no single nation, however powerful, can undertake by itself to keep the peace outside its borders.

It [the UN] has given uniquely valuable services in many places where violence threatened. It is the only real world forum where we have the opportunity for international presentation and rebuttal…. The United Nation deserves our continued firm support.

Facing dramatic global challenges, we need a global capacity to address them that reaffirms the importance of multilateralism and the importance of a rules-based set of international relations, based on the rule of law and in accordance with the U.N. Charter.

As long as NATO changes when the world is changing, we will be very important for the security of all our allies, including the United States.

The United States has the power to destroy the world, but not the power to save it alone

We must be prepared to see an Association of Nations in conference growing into an organic system of world controls for world affairs and the keeping of the world’s peace, or we must be prepared for – a continuation of war.

The world order needs a major overhaul.

Help, and you will make a huge impact in the life of the street, the town, the country and our planet. If only one out of four of each one hundred of you choose to help on any given day, in any given cause, incredible things will happen in the world you live in.

It is, for me, clear that the world needs a United States that is engaged in security issues, in development issues, in human rights issues. The contribution of the United States for global affairs is absolutely crucial. And the cooperation with the U.N. is very important from our perspective.

A global world needs global firewalls.

Globalization makes our economy, our health, and our security all captive to events on the other side of the world. And no other nation on earth has a greater capacity to shape that global system, or to build consensus around a new set of international rules that expand the zones of freedom, personal safety, and economic well-being. Like it or not, if we want to make America more secure, we are going to have to help make the world more secure.

We could change the world tomorrow if all the millions of people around the world acted the way they believe.

I just want to say this. I want to say it gently but I want to say it firmly: There is a tendency for the world to say to America, ‘the big problems of the world are yours, you go and sort them out,’ and then to worry when America wants to sort them out.

When many little people in many little places do many little things, then the whole world changes.

The UN, of course, must also adapt to modern demands and take into account the reality of the modern world in its work.

As the 20th century ended, there were around 120 democracies in the world - and I can assure you more are on the way.

The United States is not longer going to be the world's policemen and our days of determining you're in or you're out around the world no matter what the level of direct American interest or connection are going to be very limited. Increasingly, Africa will be doing that.

This is the one international institution we have in which governments get together to work collectively for a common purpose. International crises, by definition, require international solutions. Peacekeeping is a response to conflict, is a response to situations in which often it is not the business of any one particular country to get into. It seems to me, therefore, that the world will for the foreseeable future need peacekeeping.

For me, the movement has to be bigger than just a record. For me, a movement represents like taking over the world.

My main concern is with the world order

Americans cannot be the policemen of the world. We cannot protect countries all over the world.

It is a measure of the arrogance of nations - but especially of the nuclear-weapon states - to assert that a nuclear-weapons-free world is impossible when, in fact, ninety-five percent of the nations of the world already are nuclear free.

[The Republicans] looked at basically the failed wars and they said, oh, this, us being the policeman of the world, that is not working.