Kofi Annan Quotes

The U.N. is one of many competitors in a marketplace of global problem solving.

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.

We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today's complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not.

Let us face it, the U.N. has failed. It has failed in its mission to promote world peace.

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

The United Nations has become a place where many countries seek to achieve a lynching of the United States by resolution.

The United Nations exists to help countries solve their problems. If it helps the Americans solve theirs by blaming me, I'll be a scapegoat.

There is no way that any major international problem anywhere in the world can be solved efficiently with the United States sitting on the sideline.

International institutions like the UN can only be as effective as its members allow it to be.

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.

The United Nations is here to provide global guidance and also to help with global frameworks and to set the policies right. But then, it's the member states who have to implement those policies.

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

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.

The U.N. can meet and discuss, but we don't need their permission.

During the three decades of its existence, the effectiveness of the United Nations has, on the whole, tended to decrease, particularly in the field of peace and security and, more generally, all issues in which the developed countries feel they have important stakes.

We must never relent in our efforts to resolve conflicts through diplomacy and through all of the instruments bestowed by the Charter of the United Nations.

In the euphoria after the Cold War, there was a misplaced notion that the UN could solve every problem anywhere.

I'm a member of the US committee o the United Nations.

Now, the United Nations is an organization that I believe was founded with good intentions. As a matter of fact, a prominent Tennessean named Cordell Hull was very involved with it.

The purpose of the United Nations should be to protect the essential sovereignty of nations, large and small.

I would never play any role in anything that involves the United Nations for obvious reasons.

On big issues like war in Iraq, but in many other issues they simply must be multilateral. There's no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way.

There is no such thing as the United Nations.