UN quotes:

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  • The UN structure is one-sided, stacked against the world of Islam. -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
  • There was an implicit conviction that the UN would be stronger than the sum of its constituent member-states. -- Atal Bihari Vajpayee
  • In the euphoria after the Cold War, there was a misplaced notion that the UN could solve every problem anywhere. -- Atal Bihari Vajpayee
  • The reality is that international institutions like the UN can only be as effective as its members allow it to be. -- Atal Bihari Vajpayee
  • The UN declaration on human rights must always be first in line before religion or other cultural habits, in case of any conflict between them. -- Bjorn Ulvaeus
  • More than 150 heads of state attended the UN Summit, giving New Yorkers a chance to get in touch with prejudices they didn't even know they had. -- Jon Stewart
  • The interests of the United States are better served by demanding reform and seeing that reform takes place than by removing our influence from the UN. -- Jesse Helms
  • 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. -- Atal Bihari Vajpayee
  • The idea that UN commitments should be followed by action is indeed a radical one, especially for the United States, where wilful neglect of its own commitments is the rule. -- Jeffrey Sachs
  • Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon now presides over the UN Security Council. This means, in effect, that a terror organization presides over the body entrusted with guaranteeing the world's security. You couldn't make this thing up. -- Benjamin Netanyahu
  • President Bush has said that he does not need approval from the UN to wage war, and I'm thinking, well, hell, he didn't need the approval of the American voters to become president, either. -- David Letterman
  • The United Nations has a critical role to play in promoting stability, security, democracy, human rights, and economic development. The UN is as relevant today as at any time in its history, but it needs reform. -- Chuck Hagel
  • I feel that when the reforms in UN take place and the Security Council will be expanded in the permanent membership category, India will have a place, I hope so, but first it is to be expanded. -- Pranab Mukherjee
  • We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction, consistently violated UN resolutions and in a post-9/11 world no American president could afford to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt. -- Peter T. King
  • I am President of the UN created University for Peace, which has a strong commitment to the relationship between peace, security and the environment. I meet with young people around the world and I always come away enthused and encouraged. -- Maurice Strong
  • Wow, bad news. Mr. Obama now hates Israel because the Israelis want to build 1,600 apartments in their own capital city, Jerusalem. Russia hates Israel, too. So do the Europeans. So does Ban Ki-moon, a Korean who is secretary-general of the UN. -- Ben Stein
  • The one thing I have never been afraid of is standing before important people and speaking my mind. I represent women who may never have the opportunity to go to the UN or meet with a president. I'm never afraid to speak truth to power. -- Leymah Gbowee
  • The UN is hardly democratic. -- Mahathir Mohamad
  • The UN doesn't work in a vacuum. -- Kofi Annan
  • My library is filled with UN condemnations. -- Augusto Pinochet
  • Women have never been a chief negotiator in any UN-sponsored talks. -- Zainab Salbi
  • Of course the UN brings in a lot of moral authority. -- Lakhdar Brahimi
  • I went to the UN and even the guidebook was spineless. -- Dennis Miller
  • We would like UN resolutions to be enforced, including on Iraq. -- Jean-Pierre Raffarin
  • UN goodwill may be a bottomless pit but it's by no means limitless. -- John Major
  • The US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter. -- Kofi Annan
  • I am against preventive war because it means measures by the UN against us. -- Moshe Sharett
  • [The American position at the UN is] essentially impotent, without influence, heavily outvoted, and isolated. -- Jeane Kirkpatrick
  • George W. Bush will have to come to the UN and admit that he was wrong. -- Bianca Jagger
  • Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall take flack from both sides."- Unofficial UN Motto -- Robert Asprin
  • On intervention under the UN framework, I think that sometimes that's legitimate, in fact even helpful. -- Noam Chomsky
  • Obama sees America as another country on the UN role call. Somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe. -- John Bolton
  • Reporting Iran's dossier to the UN Security Council will be unconstructive and the end of diplomacy. -- Ali Larijani
  • Join me in the final race to smash poverty and achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals -- Carl Lewis
  • The UN wasn't created to take mankind into paradise, but rather, to save humanity from hell. -- Dag Hammarskjold
  • You'd never know that listening to people in the UN but tribalism is the father of racism. -- Stanley Crouch
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  • Imagine if we didn't have a President traveling the world bad mouthing America....that's the UN's job. -- Marco Rubio
  • Government will not nominate the former Labor prime minister [Kevin Rudd] to be the UN's next secretary-general. -- Malcolm Turnbull
  • The Democrats appear to be the only people who still believe there is any efficacy to the UN. -- Ann Coulter
  • In my dreams it happens, when I wake up I just hope for an even better and stronger UN. -- Hans Rosling
  • The UN could help the Iraqi government get on its feet and help the United States withdraw a bit more. -- Brent Scowcroft
  • There are many cases around the world in which the presence of UN peace-keeping forces has had a somewhat beneficial effect. -- Noam Chomsky
  • Many other countries have already banned human cloning, and there are efforts at the UN to make such a ban universal. -- Leon Kass
  • The idea that the UN system could provide real leadership on the great development challenges will strain credulity in some quarters. -- Jeffrey Sachs
  • Those who insist on transferring the Iranian nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council have received an additional argument for doing so. -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
  • The IPCC summary for policymakers is used to scare politicians and goad the public into action. The UN is all about politics. -- Marc Morano
  • Don't throw away another day! No more procrastinating! Only YOU can make it happen. So, UN-ASS the couch and make it happen! -- Steve Maraboli
  • there are people in this administration who say they don't care if the UN sinks under the East river, and other crude things... -- Hans Blix
  • The UN, of course, must also adapt to modern demands and take into account the reality of the modern world in its work. -- Vladimir Putin
  • I'm old enuf to remember when Dems considered a UN resolution and an actual coalition nothing more than Bushy McHitler going it alone. -- John Nolte
  • Don't wait for a future moment; the time is NOW! The life of your dreams awaits... UN-ASS the couch and go get it! -- Steve Maraboli
  • Why does the UN need to raise money for ebola? Can't the gov just print the damn dollars themselves and get this done already. -- Azealia Banks
  • A Hamas terrorist, a UN aid worker and a journalist walked into a Gaza hookah bar. And no one could tell who was who. -- Ralph Peters
  • Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it. -Andrew Young, author, civil rights activist, US congressman, mayor, and UN ambassador (b. 1932) -- Andrew Young
  • [Brazil] went to the UN and said, "We need new standards for this." We need to take a look at what they're calling "data sovereignty." -- Edward Snowden
  • [The UN should remain in New York] because every country needs a cesspool. And the UN is always interesting as a theater of the absurd. -- Ed Koch
  • The tendency of the UN and its major supporters is to think good intentions and mild to rampant corruption are as good as actual results. -- John Hamill
  • We believe the use of force against Iraq, especially with reference to previous resolutions of the UN Security Council, has no grounds, including legal grounds. -- Igor Ivanov
  • I hope we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time - without UN approval and much broader support from the international community. -- Kofi Annan
  • The sanctions may be imposed only by the decision of the UN Security Council. A unilateral imposition of sanctions is a violation of international law. -- Vladimir Putin
  • We should find other platforms, other forums for that [foreign policy], and there are plenty of them, including, for example, the UN and the Security Council. -- Vladimir Putin
  • Despite a decade of criticism and budget cuts, the specialised UN agencies have far more expertise and hands-on experience than any other organisations in the world. -- Jeffrey Sachs
  • [Operation] Rockingham was spinning reports and emphasizing reports that showed non-compliance (by Iraq with UN inspections) and quashing those which showed compliance. It was cherry-picking intelligence. -- Scott Ritter
  • Sweden formally writing back to the United Nations to say, 'No, we're not going to [recognise the UN ruling], so leaving open their ability to extradite. -- Julian Assange
  • You may have noticed over the years that the UN became a bit more media-friendly, a bit more open to the media than in the past. -- Kofi Annan
  • Britain, Europe's second largest economy, a member of the G-7 and the UN Security Council, wants to leave the EU. That weakens us and it weakens Britain. -- Martin Schulz
  • These two points are lies. UN Resolution 2758 does not say a word about the relationship between Taiwan and China, let alone say that the PRC represents Taiwan -- Annette Lu
  • What is being called the UN 'gender architecture' is more like a shack. Women need a bigger global house if equality is ever to become a reality. -- Charlotte Bunch
  • Today's message to Baghdad is very clear: the UN Security Council resolution expresses the unity and determination of the entire international community to assume its collective responsibility. -- Javier Solana
  • There were always jokes about Hillary Clinton channeling Eleanor Roosevelt, but Eleanor Roosevelt was really instrumental at the UN, and would want to meet with various other delegates. -- Madeleine Albright
  • It also seems that the Afghans themselves want to avail themselves of this opportunity and all recognize that the UN is uniquely qualified to help bring them together. -- Lakhdar Brahimi
  • According to a new UN report, the global warming outlook is much worse than originally predicted. Which is pretty bad, when they originally predicted it would destroy the planet. -- Jay Leno
  • No military timetable should compel war when a successful outcome, namely a disarmed Iraq may be feasible without war, for example by allowing more time to the UN inspectors. -- Douglas Hurd
  • In a case like Iraq the UN has again shown what important role it plays as the guarantor for protecting international peace and stability in the global political structure. -- Anna Lindh
  • The UN platform was created precisely for this, to seek compromise, to communicate with one another. So it will definitely be nice if we make use of this platform. -- Vladimir Putin
  • The view we took at the time and we take it now is that the war was justified legally because he [Saddam Hussein] remained in breach of UN resolutions. -- Tony Blair
  • The only solution is to kill 600 people in one night. Let the UN and Bill Clinton and everyone else make a scene - and it is over for 20 years. -- Alan Clark
  • Sometimes acting and politics make a very bad combination. I think that sometimes people take me less seriously in my work for the UN because I am an actor. -- Angelina Jolie
  • The UN is but a long-range, international banking apparatus clearly set up for financial and economic profit by a small group of powerful One-World revolutionaries, hungry for profit and power. -- Curtis Bean Dall
  • One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come before them, where we're involved, and it didn't upset my breakfast at all. -- Ronald Reagan
  • The UN is committed to the goal of ensuring that all nations share in economic, social, & scientific progress. It delivers humanitarian assistance to the victims of wars and natural disasters. -- Bill Bradley
  • If all the diplomats were kicked out, the UN could be turned into the finest bordello in the world and do just as much, if not more, for international harmony. -- F. Paul Wilson
  • It is time to reinvigorate the UN General Assembly so that it can exercise a more decisive role in peace-making and peace-keeping, consistent with the will of the international community. -- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
  • The UN can go as far as the U.S. will allow, and no further. And it's bound by conditions that the powerful states, which means mostly the U.S., impose. -- Noam Chomsky
  • Secret bank accounts are for laundering dirty money. Heads of state at the UN should put an end them. That would be the best way of tracking down the drug traffickers. -- Evo Morales
  • Refugee problems can only be solved in the region (of origin) - maybe with a little help from the UN. Governments must provide something for their countries. They need to deliver. -- Yoweri Museveni
  • Before and during the first phase of the war his administration repeatedly maligned the UN but now, that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, it is asking the UN for help. -- Peter Schuyler
  • When we look at how, constitutionally, only Congress can declare war, and that is routinely ignored. Not NATO or the UN, but Congress has to authorize these endless wars, and it isn't. -- Edward Snowden
  • Somewhat by historical happenstance the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China - also were the original five countries to have nuclear weapons. -- John Burroughs
  • The report [by a UN commission on Darfur] demonstrates beyond all doubt that the last two years have been little short of hell on earth for our fellow human beings in Darfur. -- Kofi Annan
  • I will go to the UN General Assembly and, in a clear voice, tell the nations of the world the truth about Iran's terrorist regime, which constitutes the greatest threat to world peace. -- Benjamin Netanyahu
  • I have been involved with the UN refugee agency for a few years now, and we have done events to speak about refugees, focusing more and more on the situation with Afghan refugees. -- Khaled Hosseini
  • If you've been here, in New York, it has been dominated by the UN General Assembly, the annual event where delegates come from all over the world to f*** up this city's traffic. -- John Oliver
  • There are so many orgizations that do amazing work. I represent not only my own foundation, but the UN Refugee Agency, which has been around since 1951, and has helped 30 million refugees around the world. -- Khaled Hosseini
  • Terrorism constitutes a direct attack on the values the UN stands for: the rule of law; the protection of civilians; peaceful resolution of conflicts; and mutual respect between people of different faiths and cultures. -- Kofi Annan
  • We need a reform of the Security Council. It must be perceived as truly representative by all the 191 member states, to uphold the credibility and legitimacy of the UN as the main political arena. -- Anna Lindh
  • There's no longer a superpower standoff. But there are real problems that divide countries around the world. And the UN is still the place where we can get together and try and discuss them -- Shashi Tharoor
  • We're not getting involved in terms of sending ground forces into Libya. Let's be clear about that. And indeed the UN Resolution forbids that. It says no foreign occupation of any part of Libya. -- William Hague
  • I was with Ted Turner when he came to see Kofi Annan - the Secretary-General of the UN - to announce his decision to put $1 billion to the service of UN projects and programs. -- Maurice Strong
  • The purpose of the UN mechanism, this inspection mechanism, is not to engage in a cat and mouse game with Saddam Hussein and try to find weapons that the Iraqi government is working on concealing. -- Douglas J. Feith
  • This is no job for a UN committee. It needs the same kind of unwavering dedication and the kinds of people that got us the first nuclear submarine and the first man on the moon. -- Wilson Greatbatch
  • Mr. Obama at the UN said that the large nations should not trample small ones in pursuit of what he called "territorial ambition". These are curious statements coming from the American president at this time. -- Vijay Prashad
  • George W. Bush and his administration embarked on a full-scale assault on civil liberties, human rights and the rule of law, walking away from his international obligations, tearing up international treaties, protocols and UN conventions. -- Bianca Jagger
  • The purpose of the UN mechanism, this inspection mechanism, is not to engage in a cat and mouse game with Saddam Hussein and try to find weapons that the Iraqi government is working on concealing. -- Douglas J. Feith
  • After the German abstention at the UN, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle commented that Germany doesn't always have to stand on the side of its traditional allies. Berlin can look for new partners all over the world. -- Donald Rumsfeld
  • I had met [Donald] Trump once before, when he testified before a committee that Tom Coburn - Senator Coburn - and I hosted, to deal with excessive expenditures to refurbish the UN building in New York. -- Jeff Sessions
  • I think he was absolutely right not to go to UN last week... First things first - that is, values and people here in their local communities, and remembering all politics is local, and trusting people more. -- Patricia Hewitt
  • The UN to some extent diffuses U.S. power. Therefore it's less direct an agency of the United States than the U.S. Army is. But still, it can't escape the distribution of power in the world. -- Noam Chomsky
  • What the UN inspectors can do is demonstrate to the world, help the Iraqi government demonstrate to the world that the Iraqis are cooperatively disarming if that is in fact what the Iraqi government decides to do. -- Douglas Feith
  • What the UN inspectors can do is demonstrate to the world, help the Iraqi government demonstrate to the world that the Iraqis are cooperatively disarming if that is in fact what the Iraqi government decides to do. -- Douglas Feith
  • Luckily, my children love broccoli, and although we sometimes enter into UN-like negotiations about how many 'trees' they need to eat before they can partake of ice cream, it is a vegetable that they tend to embrace. -- Gwyneth Paltrow
  • He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do. -- Henry Waxman
  • Universality of the UN is a worthwhile thing in its own self because it means that every country belongs, feels it has a stake, and participates, rather than going away and finding other methods of conducting international relations. -- Shashi Tharoor
  • All you need to know about Arafat was that he insisted on wearing a pistol when he addressed the UN General Assembly. And all you need to know about the UN, I suppose, is that they let him. -- James Lileks
  • There is a story which is not being told strongly enough of the Afghan employees of the UN inside the country who are saving hundreds of thousands of lives everyday by their bravery and nobody talks of them. -- Lakhdar Brahimi
  • I am against conversion (to Buddhism). In my speech at UN, the first thing I said was that I am for conversion, but not from one organised religion to another, but from misery to happiness, from bondage to liberation. -- S. N. Goenka
  • The views of the European Union are fully reflected in this text, particularly the key objective of the EU, namely vigorously to address the disarmament of Iraq and to do so within the framework of the UN Security Council. -- Javier Solana
  • It is the responsibility of all of us to remind governments of their commitments to settle disputes by peaceful means and to negotiate in good faith under the UN Charter, and to denounce war agitation particularly by the media. -- Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
  • The third point is that for some time the UN has been talking about helping Afghanistan in the reconstruction of the country but there has never been any real commitment by the international community to provide resources for that. -- Lakhdar Brahimi
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