Bertrand Russell Quotes

As we have seen, the wireless and the airplane have made the world so small and nations so dependent on each other that the only alternative to war is the United States of the World.

However difficult it may be to bring it about, some form of world government, with agreed international law and means of enforcing the law, is inevitable.

World government is a premature concept at this stage. We are moving more and more into supernational arrangements, but it is too early still.

I have long believed that the only way peace can be achieved is through world government.

If wars in the future are to be prevented the nations must be united in their determination to keep the peace under law.

Unless we establish some form of world government, it will not be possible for us to avert a World War III in the future.

The attractive idea that we can now have a parliament of man with authority to control the conduct of nations by legislation or an international police force with power to enforce national conformity to rules of right conduct is a counsel of perfection.

If nations could only depend upon fair and impartial judgments in a world court of law, they would abandon the senseless, savage practice of war.

The consequence is that what is called "the Law of Nations" is a savage code. The world will never be civilized until there is an international court. Savages begin to be civilized when they submit their difficulties to their peers. Nations will become civilized when they submit their difficulties to a great court, the judgments of which can be carried out, all nations pledging the cooperation of their armies and their navies for that purpose

The U.N. charter bars the threat of force.

It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict, we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace.

Anybody who really wants to abolish war must resolutely declare himself in favor of his own country's resigning a portion of sovereignty in place of international institutions.

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.

Within a few weeks the organization for the maintenance of international peace and security, established by the San Francisco Charter, will be formally launched through the convocation of the first General Assembly of the United Nations.

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

The UN's unique legitimacy flows from a universal perception that it pursues a larger purpose than the interests of one country or a small group of countries.

The logic of collective security is flawless, provided it can be made to work under the conditions prevailing on the international scene... The odds, however, are strongly against such a possibility.

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.

What makes the United Nations an appropriate source of legitimacy for intervention is that it is the only place where the claims of the strong are put through the test of justification in front of the weak.

The British can not alone act as the policemen of the world.

A world authority and an eventual world state are not just desirable in the name of brotherhood, they are necessary for survival.

The world state is inherent in the United Nations as an oak tree is in an acorn.

This organization [the United Nations] is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn't created to take you to heaven.

We must have a world organization for the purpose of deliberation, but not for the purpose of waging wars and imposing sanctions.