John Boyd Orr Quotes

The world before 1914 was already a world in which the welfare of each individual nation was inextricably bound up with the prosperity of the whole community of nations.

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.

It is characteristic that this should take place just when it is becoming more and more clear to all who think about the matter, that technically and economically we have left the territorial state behind us.

For virtually every area of public policy there is a globalist proposal, consistent with the overall objective of reducing individual nation-state autonomy, particularly that of the United States?

The Nation is ceasing to be the leading form off the world’s structure; organizations transcending national boundaries are becoming more and more numerous and effective.

In truth, the world is now a seamless web from which no nation, large or small, young or old, can disassociate itself. Every attitude and every action of every nation can affect the welfare and security of every other nation around the globe.

As our world gets more interconnected, no one country or region can meet development challenges on its own.

We no longer live in a bipolar world. The world is interconnected and interdependent. You will have to connect with everybody at the same time. Even if there are two opposing countries, they will have to be friends. Now the times have changed.

Isolationism is over.

Today we stand on a bridge leading from the territorial state to the world community. Politically, we are still governed by the concept of the territorial state; economically and technically, we live under the auspices of worldwide communications and worldwide markets.

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

There will always be nations. The United States will last a long, long time, I believe. France and Germany and Japan, China, other nations, they're going to exist. But they're losing their significance and ability to deal with certain matters.

However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day.

We do live, like it or not, in a world that is deeply interdependent. 9-11 proved that even security is something that we cannot achieve by ourselves.

Sovereignty will fall victim to the flow of people, ideas, greenhouse gases, dollars, drugs, viruses, and e-mails… Sovereign states will increasingly measure their vulnerability not to one another but to forces of globalization beyond their control.

Globalization is blurring the distinction between foreign affairs and domestic politics.

Local and national politics have now become irretrievably global because their economies are locked into the global system.

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

It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the imperatives of global environmental cooperation.

National boundaries are blurred by advanced communications and global commerce, and by the decisions of States to yield some sovereign prerogatives to larger, common political associations.

The political game remains predominantly national. It is usually played as if national units were more independent economically than they actually are.

There must of course always be separate interests of different nations which their governments are bound to maintain, but there are also common interests in which all civilized nations share. These common interests arise from the interdependence of civilized peoples and they are a product of developing civilization.

No country can be an island unto itself or world unto itself. Not even the biggest country.

Isolationism is not leadership.

It was in the 20th century that national sovereignty really ruled the roost, and the E.U. was formed to cure that.