Daniel Patrick Moynihan Quotes

Alliances and international organizations should be understood as opportunities for leadership and a means to expand our influence, not as constraints on our power.

Everyone in Congress wants our country to lead, to build alliances, to help American companies compete, and to protect the interests and security of our citizens. You can't have it both ways. You can't expect others to follow if you can't lead, and you can't lead if you don't pay your way.

For a sitting U.S. president to see our allies as freeloaders is nuts.

Our freedom, our prosperity and our security depend on a proper respect for the fortune of our neighbours, allies and old friends.

For future geopolitical stability and global prosperity, we need to build a culture of greater trust and understanding between China, America and the rest of the world.

Finally we are a nation with some conscience. It means alliances are extremely important when they're based on a national interest. We have to have the ability to sustain our presence within those alliances.

Community means engaging constructively with like-minded nations to build strong, sustaining institutions and alliances - and bringing emerging powers into this community so future conflict becomes less likely.

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.

We must recognize that as the dominant power in the world we have a special responsibility. In addition to protecting our national interests, we must take the leadership in protecting the common interests of humanity.

I think that we had a different view of what the 21st century could be like, with much more of a sense, from our perspective, of trying to have an interdependent world: looking at solving regional conflicts, having strength in alliances, operating within some kind of a sense that we were part of the international community and not outside of it.

Germany must be a country which generates political ideas and leadership, which is capable of compromise, which is sovereign and yet knows that it needs its partners on both sides of the Atlantic.

We never used to blink at taking a leadership role in the world. And we understood leadership often required something other than drones and bombs. We accepted global leadership not just for humanitarian reasons, but also because it was in our own best interest. We knew we couldn't isolate ourselves from trouble. There was no place to hide.

And in this community, as in all others, the Golden Rule still applies - we must be act toward other nations as we would have them act towards America.

The life of states cannot, any more than the life of individuals, be conditioned by the force and the will of a unit, however powerful, but by the consensus of a group, which must one day include all states.

I do believe that both countries, China and Russia, that both of them are responsible countries.

We proved we could be safe and secure at home, and still have more allies and friends in the world.

Cooperation may imply compromise, but if it brings a world advance it is a gain for each individual nation.

Multilateralism may be little more than a polite way of camouflaging what is in practice unilateralism with allies.

There are bonds of fraternity linking democratic countries.

The United States may have to abandon its policy of avoiding entangling alliances.

International policy does not aim at exploiting local, specific conditions to widen zones of influence and create difficulties for another country. The goal of international policy is to insure universal fulfillment of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" and to prevent a sharpening of international tensions and a strengthening of militarist and nationalist tendencies.

No nation can build a safer, better world alone.

We need to get involved in things that are important to other countries, just as we expect them to participate in things that are important to us.

I believe mutual respect for one another and cooperation should be the basis for relationships with foreign nations.

For decades, allies have counted on the U.S. to step up to the plate to work with them to protect the shared values we hold dear. As we face numerous international challenges, both old and new, we need to put more faith and investment in our international and diplomatic institutions, not weaken them.