Quotes & Notes

When nationalism stands for self-sufficient isolationism, and internationalism belittles the importance of national life, then words become contradictory and the corresponding attitudes, irreconcilable. With one part of his being the individual belongs to his native country, and with another part he is a citizen of a world that does not admit of national isolation any more.
The question is not either the nation or the world but how to serve the world by serving one’s people or how to serve one’s nation by serving the world.

Faith in national self-determination is both an asset and a liability: Asset as a resolution to shape a national destiny and  assume the responsibility for it, as a brake on immature experiments in international integration; but a liability when it makes us blind to the necessity of international organization, necessary to the life of the nation.

The United Nations is not and should not be an organizational strait-jacket on the world or on the independent states which are its members.

It has been said that the United Nations was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell. I think that sums up as well as anything I have heard both the essential role of the United Nations and the attitude of mind we should bring to it's support.

Good intention will always be pleaded for every assumption of power.... It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.