Sovereign States Quotes

Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are Sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a Sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever.

We are not a nation, but a union, a confederacy of equal and sovereign states.

There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.

His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States … to be fee, sovereign, and independent states.

For in every country of the world, I believe, the avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states, abusing the confidence of their subjects, have by degrees diminished the real quantity of metal, which had been originally contained in their coins.

I never use the word nation in speaking of the United States. I always use the word Union or Confederacy. We are not a nation but a union, a confederacy of equal and sovereign States.

Either we are a sovereign state, or we are not! As long as we are not, we have no business in a community of sovereign states.

Shouldn't the General Assembly adopt a declaration on the inadmissibility of interference into domestic affairs of sovereign states and nonrecognition of coup d'etats as a method of the change of power?

The basis, the corner-stone of this Government, was the perfect equality of the free, sovereign, and independent States which made it.

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.

The distinguishing feature of a revolutionary power is not that they feel threatened—such feeling is inherent in the nature of relationships between sovereign states—but that nothing can reassure it—only the complete elimination and/or destruction of that state.

The Government of the United States is not entitled to affirm as a universal proposition, with reference to a number of independent States for whose conduct it assumes no responsibility, that its interests are necessarily concerned in whatever may befall those States simply because they are situated in the Western Hemisphere.

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

What’s the difference between a blockade of harbors or airports of sovereign states and a blockade of government institutions and newspapers?

Globalization has rendered the world increasingly interdependent, but international politics is still based on the sovereignty of states.

The world consists of, and is divided by, sovereign states which recognize no superior authority.

States are not moral agents.

The Emperor has the option to communicate with the help of the Italian government for all matters that he wants with the kings of Europe. [Aramaic Version] The Emperor consents to use the Italian government for all the business he does with all the other Powers or Governments. [Italian Version]

Our adversaries have adopted some declarations of independence, in which, unlike our the good old one penned by Jefferson, they omit the words "all men are created equal." Why? They have adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble of which, unlike our good old one signed by Washington, they omit "We, the people," and substitute: "We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent states." Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of view the rights of men and the authority of the people?

You cannot force a state to be demilitarized. Even if a state enters a treaty where it commits to be demilitarized, there's no way to reverse statehood if it violates it.

The United Nations is an organization of sovereign states, but the rights that it upholds belong to individuals.

The people of every separate political community (dependent Colonies, Provinces, and Territories as well as sovereign States) have an inalienable right to govern themselves in respect to their internal polity.

This right to secede is deduced from the nature of the Constitution, which they say is a compact between sovereign States who have preserved their whole sovereignty, and therefore are subject to no superior; that because they made the compact, they can break it when in their opinion it has been departed from by the other States. Fallacious as this course of reasoning is, it enlists State pride, and finds advocates in the honest prejudices of those who have not studied the nature of our government sufficiently to see the radical error on which it rests.

To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support - to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective - to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak - and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.