Samantha Power Quotes

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

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.

Probably the most useful thing I can do as secretary of state is to assist the president in adapting and renewing the transnational institutions that were created after World War II.

What we need now is a Treaty of the World not a Treaty of Rome.

Globalisation must have, as a critical component, international dispensation in the locality of U.N. institutions. It cannot be, and must not be, business as usual in the establishment and location of international institutions, especially of the United Nations.

I think the American people, understandably, have sort of lost faith in the United Nations.

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.

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.

It's true that America can't solve every problem, but I don't know of any major problem in the world that can be solved without us.

Without American leadership at the U.N., countries just continue to talk and socialize and spend taxpayer dollars.

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

There are many who criticise the United Nations. And those of us who know this institution well know that it is not immune from criticism. But those who argue against the United Nations advance no credible argument as to what should replace it. Whatever its imperfections, the United Nations represents a necessary democracy of states.

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.

Legislation that would withhold funding for the United Nations is fundamentally flawed in concept and practice, sets us back, is self-defeating, and doesn't work.

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.

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

There is no such thing as the United Nations.

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

Over many years, the United States has worked to persuade and compel governments around the world to abide by the rules. By spurning our own rules, we put that effort at risk.

I will do everything in my power to ensure that our United Nations can live up to its name, and be truly united; so that we can live up to the hopes that so many people around the world place in this institution, which is unique in the annals of human history.

Peace and security of our planet must be based on the collective action of all nations, not a few, however powerful they may be.

If governments do not want to work with the U.N. and the international organizations, there is a limit to what you can do. And there is also a limit to patience.

If the savior of man would revisit and declare himself for a League of Nations, I would be opposed to it.

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.

The United Nations is a failed institution in its current form.