These UN quotes will motivate you. The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945. Currently made up of 193 Member States, the UN and its work are guided by the purposes and principles contained in its founding Charter.
Below you will find a collection of inspiring, happy, and encouraging UN quotes, UN sayings, and UN proverbs.
Best UN Quotes
- “If the United Nations is to survive, those who represent it must bolster it; those who advocate it must submit to it; and those who believe in it must fight for it.” ~ Norman Cousins
- “The United Nations, whose membership comprises almost all the States in the world, is founded on the principle of the equal worth of every human being.” ~ Kofi Annan
- “The United Nations represents not a final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive stage. Therefore its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization.” ~ John Foster Dulles
- “From this vision of the role of the United Nations in the next century flow three key priorities for the future: eradicating poverty, preventing conflict and promoting democracy.” ~ Kofi Annan
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“There’s no such thing as the United Nations.” ~ John Bolton
- “If the United Nations does not attempt to chart a course for the world’s people in the first decades of the new millennium, who will?” ~ Kofi Annan
- “I am working for a better United Nations. Nothing is perfect. You should never rely on only one source, but rather rely on those you believe in the most.” ~ Angelina Jolie
- “It is not the Soviet Union or indeed any other big Powers who need the United Nations for their protection. It is all the others. In this sense, the Organization is first of all their Organization and I deeply believe in the wisdom with which they will be able to use it and guide it. I shall remain in my post during the term of my office as a servant of the Organization in the interests of all those other nations, as long as they wish me to do so.” ~ Dag Hammarskjold
- “The United Nations is our one great hope for a peaceful and free world.” ~ Ralph Bunche
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“The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members.” ~ Harry S. Truman
- “In the 21st Century I believe the mission of the United Nations will be defined by a new, more profound, awareness of the sanctity and dignity of every human life, regardless of race or religion.” ~ Kofi Annan
- “More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can master it only if we face it together. And that, my friends, is why we have the United Nations.” ~ Kofi Annan
- “Everything will be all right – you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves.” ~ Dag Hammarskjold
- “The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations–great or small–to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century.” ~ Adlai E. Stevenson
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“This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn’t created to take you to heaven.” ~ Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
- “If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “The United Nations was not set up to be a reformatory. It was assumed that you would be good before you got in and not that being in would make you good” ~ John Foster Dulles
- “No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.” ~ Vladimir Putin
- “Iceland sets a world-record. The United Nations asked people from all over the world a series of questions. Iceland stuck out on one thing. When we were asked what do we believe, 90% said, ‘ourselves’. I think I’m in that group. If I get into trouble, there’s no God or Allah to sort me out. I have to do it myself.” ~ Bjork
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“We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.” ~ John F. Kennedy
- “No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation” ~ David Spangler
- “The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine… a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.” ~ Conor Cruise O’Brien
- “I am like a doctor. I have written a prescription to help the patient. If the patient doesn’t want all the pills I’ve recommended, that’s up to him. But I must warn that next time I will have to come as a surgeon with a knife.” ~ Javier Perez de Cuellar
- “The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster – especially if some nations are not democracies.” ~ Jonah Goldberg
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“Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves.” ~ U Thant
- “The primary, the fundamental, the essential purpose of the United Nations is to keep peace. Everything it does which helps prevent World War III is good. Everything which does not further that goal, either directly or indirectly, is at best superfluous.” ~ Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. , UN quotes peace keeping
- “The United Nations is an indispensable but deeply flawed organization. It is valuable to the United States, and the United States is invaluable to it. We need to reform it.” ~ Richard Holbrooke
- “The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it, and are now in the process of selling it.” ~ Arundhati Roy
- “The building of a just and peaceful world order, the aim of the United Nations, is hampered not by a dearth of ideas, resources, and manpower but by the lack of will on the part of governments to take the required steps.” ~ Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
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“The United Nations … [is] a place for prostitution under the feet of Americans.” ~ Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
- “Both Bush as well, as Tony Blair, are undermining an idea which was sponsored by their predecessors. They do not care. Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations [Ghanaian Kofi Annan] is now a black man? They never did that when secretary-generals were white.” ~ Nelson Mandela
- “The New World Order run by the United Nations ain’t gonna happen. Because they’ve shown their hand, and at least some corner of Congress and the American people are awake to it: they’ve blown it all.” ~ Michael Moriarty
- “The United Nation’s goal is to reduce population selectively by encouraging abortion, forced sterilization, and control of human reproduction, and regards two-thirds of the human population as excess baggage, with 350,000 people to be eliminated per day.” ~ Jacques Yves Cousteau
- “We’ve always defined conflict fairly broadly from ideological conflict to troops on the ground. For quite some time we’ve talked about a focus on Palestine. Certainly no one can deny that Israel is conflict with Palestine and no one can deny that the U.S. is the largest supporter of Israel internationally – not only financially, but also in the United Nations where the United States is one of the very few countries that does not recognize Palestine as a state.” ~ Jon Rubin
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“We have actively sought and are actively seeking to make the United Nations an effective instrument of international cooperation.” ~ Dean Acheson
- “Here we have a case, the Swedish case, where I have never been charged with a crime, where I have already been cleared [by the Stockholm prosecutor] and found to be innocent, where the woman herself said that the police made it up, where the United Nations formally said the whole thing is illegal, where the State of Ecuador also investigated and found that I should be given asylum. Those are the facts, but what is the rhetoric?” ~ Julian Assange
- “The United Nations believes that acceptance of these principles will help the Palestinian people achieve their legitimate goal of an end to occupation and the creation of an independent and viable state, living in peace and security with its neighbors.” ~ Kofi Annan
- “India has indeed a great and free future before her, in which she can make her special contribution to the well-being of mankind. The first and indispensable part of that contribution is to work with the United Nations for the defeat of fascism and of brutal aggression.” ~ Stafford Cripps
- “We announce the birth of a conceptual country, NEWTOPIA. Citizenship of the country can be obtained by declaration of your awareness of NEWTOPIA. NEWTOPIA has no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people. NEWTOPIA has no laws other than cosmic. All people of NEWTOPIA are ambassadors of the country. As two ambassadors of NEWTOPIA, we ask for diplomatic immunity and recognition in the United Nations of our country and our people.” ~ John Lennon
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“If the United Nations is not as united as it should be, that is because it is a reflection of the world we live in.” ~ Kofi Annan
- “The founders of the United Nations expected that member nations would behave and vote as individuals after they had weighed the merits of an issue – rather like a great, global town meeting. The emergence of blocks and the polarization of the United Nations undermine all that this organization initially valued.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “It’s a little bit about being a global citizen, with all the United Nations positive umph that there is with that phrase – it’s about being a positive do-gooder. But it’s also: how can I participate in globalization in a really clear way? Like: don’t leave the house unless you can bring something worthy into the world. And so Nicaragua changed the way that I want to do things.” ~ Anne Elizabeth Moore
- “What has happened to the dreams of the United Nations’ founders? What has happened to the spirit which created the United Nations? The answer is clear: Governments got in the way of the dreams of the people.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “I think we’re in a global crisis of unprecedented scale, with global warming and climate change, and we don’t have the solution using any of the separated structures that are attempting to solve these issues, whether it be the United Nations, or the global corporations.” ~ Barbara Marx Hubbard
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“The United Nations cannot stand by and witness the destruction of the people of West Papua.” ~ Bernard Dowiyogo
- “I’ve been vegan for 15 years, and it turns out it makes a very big impact on the environment to eat fewer animal products, which cause more greenhouse gases than all of transportation combined. The United Nations did a study just over two years ago, and that blew my mind. I started thinking that if people are vegetarian for just one day a week, that makes a huge difference!” ~ Emily Deschanel
- “I believe that our world needs an instrument of global action as never before in history. I believe that the United Nations is the instrument for securing peace and for giving people everywhere, in poorer countries as in richer, a real stake in that peace by promoting development and encouraging cooperation. But the United Nations is only an instrument, an actor in need of props and cues from its directors, And so I will paraphrase Winston Churchill: Give us the tools-the trust, the authority and the means-and we will do the job.” ~ Kofi Annan
- “As a state, as a government, in 2001 we proposed to the United Nations to empty or to get rid of every WMD in the Middle East, and the United States stood against that proposal. This is our conviction and policy.” ~ Bashar al-Assad
- “If we want to expect something from this [Barack Obama] administration, it is not to be weak, to be strong to say that “we don’t have evidence,” that “we have to obey the international law”, that “we have to go back to the Security Council and the United Nations”.” ~ Bashar al-Assad
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“I have been in America only once since Mr. Clinton became your president – as a speaker at the United Nations.” ~ Mangosuthu Buthelezi
- “The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail… You can safely appeal to the UN in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.” ~ Conor Cruise O’Brien
- “Today, our planet demands a more effective, efficient, transparent and representative United Nations; a UN where all societies of the world have greater participation. The UN must then, dare to change in order to improve. In Mexico, we firmly believe that the UN has all the powers to be more daring and to renovate itself.” ~ Enrique Pena Nieto
- “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 , UN quotes on human rights
- “Whether we’re talking about what the role of the government is, what you think of the United Nations, political leaders or how to respond to [Hurricane] Katrina and whether it had anything to do with race, across a wide variety of issues we see differences between mainstream black and white American opinion that dwarfs anything in American public opinion, period. Democrat versus Republican, men versus women, conservative versus liberal, the black/white divide is the biggest, one of the biggest in the world, and certainly the largest gap in the United States.” ~ Michael C Dawson
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“…Sound foreign policy is more than arms control, foreign aid and paying (United Nations) dues.” ~ John McCain
- “Our troops are in Burundi. We were requested by African countries who said, look, the United Nations is not moving on this matter, can you people deploy people, so we can move Burundi forward.” ~ Thabo Mbeki
- “It’s plain that the American right wing, the Republicans and some sections of the Democratic Party, don’t really care about international norms. They believe in the executive authority of the president. They don’t even believe the United Nations or international law should play any role vis-à-vis American policymaking.” ~ Vijay Prashad
- “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.” ~ Zach Wamp
- “But it is important to observe that when Europe or the United Nations impose sanctions that are supposed to be aimed against a certain regime, usually generally millions of people end up being directly punished.” ~ Omar Bongo
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“If Australia wants an effective United Nations, we have to be comprehensively, not marginally, engaged.” ~ Kevin Rudd
- “As the president has said, if the United Nations will not disarm Saddam Hussein, it will be another international organization, a coalition of the willing that will be made up of numerous nations that will disarm Saddam Hussein.” ~ Ari Fleischer
- “Like Canada, we very much wanted the United Nations to be a relevant and effective body. But once those efforts failed, we no longer saw things from a multilateral perspective. For us, now, it is much more basic than that. It is about family.” ~ Paul Cellucci
- “An important United Nations environmental conference went past 6:00 in the evening when the interpreters’ contracted working conditions said they could leave. They left, abandoning the delegates unable to talk to each other in their native languages. The French head of the committee, who had insisted on speaking only in French throughout the week suddenly demonstrated the ability to speak excellent English with English-speaking delegates.” ~ Daniel Yergin
- “Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective- a new world order-can emerge… We are now in sight of a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders.” ~ George H. W. Bush
- “President Obama has decided to have the United Nations review the law of Arizona. You have got to be kidding! We’re now going to have countries like Cuba, Libya and Uganda sitting in judgment on Arizona’s laws? Enough is enough!” ~ Russell Pearce
