SCHOLAR ISLAND
UN
"The U.N. is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the U.N. and what it means clearly. 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 (former Secretary General of the U.N._
"This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn’t created to take you to heaven."
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
"I like the words of Sir Rabindranath Tagore’s poem, "Listen to the rumbling of the clouds, O heart of mine. Be brave, break through and leave for the unknown…."
I think that these lines express in a very noble way the attitude we must take to this venture called the United nations. We may listen to the rumbling of the clouds, but we can never afford to lose that kind of confidence in ourselves and in the wisdom of man which makes us brave enough to break through and leave, always for the unknown."
Dag Hammarskjold
"I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land."
Senaca
"An American soldier wounded on a battlefield in the Far East owes his life to the Japanese scientist Kitasato, who isolated the bacillus of tetanus. A Russian soldier saved by a blood transfusion is indebted to Landsteiner, an Austrian. A German is shielded from typhoid fever with the help of a Russian, Metchnikoff. A Dutch marine in the East Indies is protected from malaria because of the experiments of an Italian, Grassi; while a British aviator in North Africa escapes death from surgical infection because a Frenchman, Pasteur, and a German, Koch, elaborated a new technique.
In peace, as in war, we are beneficiaries of knowledge contributed by every nation in the world. Our children are guarded from diphtheria by what a Japanese and a German did; they are protected from smallpox by the work of an Englishman; they are saved from rabies because of a Frenchman; they are cured of pellagra through the researches of an Austrian. From birth to death they are surrounded by an invisible host-the spirits of men who never thought in terms of flags or boundary lines and who never served a lesser loyalty than the welfare of mankind."
Raymond B. Fosdick
WE the peoples of the United Nations
Determined
To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal right of men and women and of nations large and small, and
To establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, and for these ends
To practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and
To unite our strength to maintain international peace and security And
To insure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and
To employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples.
Have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.
PREAMBLE TO THE CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS
See article: WHY IS AMERICA HESITANT TO SIGN WORLD’S TREATIES?
BY Barbara Crossette…The New York Times
"With all my heart I believe that the world's present system of sovereign nations can lead only to barbarism, war and inhumanity, and that only world law can assure progress towards a civilized peaceful community."
Albert Einstein (1946)
"Are we yet aware of the danger that in the Middle East the United Nations may come to be regarded and mistrusted and hated as the guardian of the New World Order-the New Age trappings for the old Humanistic conspiracy of Left and Right together? The danger of Russia and the United States is the seen danger, and a grave one it is. Seen, it must in time be settled by peace or war. The danger of Orient versus Occident-of Islamic culture versus Christian culture-seems as yet unseen. That could be ruinous. We may well succumb to it from not seeing. We must not assume in the days ahead that the crisis in the Middle East can be solved through military alliances political connivance, or strategic initiative. Beware of the politicians or the coalitions that propose such a solution-they may be fairly regarded whether from the Left or the Right as part of the same old entrenched interests that have stood against the Christian faith and have fought for a mechanical imposition of the New Age or the New World Order since the time of the Fall."
Kermit Roosevelt (1949)
Theodore Roosevelt: American Monarch
"The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times a New World Order can emerge."
-George Herbert Walker Bush (addressing a joint session of Congress)
"On our one and only planet, there were at the time about 80 separate and sovereign political and economic units. Today there are over 175. Some are rich, some poor. Some are large, others small. But all are the same in one respect: each claims absolute political power over its citizens. Like a body with 175 separate brains, each gives different orders to the various organs. If the Earth was a single human, we'd call him an uncoordinated idiot. As it is, the absence of a "world brain" is a state of being one can quite reasonably label global idiocy. And the United Nations? Wasn't it created in order to be the brain of humanity-an inclusive coordinating authority? Despite the noble convictions and imposing facade, the answer is a clear no. One of the clearest pieces of evidence is its complete failure to prevent war. Out of the 200 wars fought thus far in the 20th Century, at least 75 occurred after the founding of the UN."
Garry Davis
Passport to Freedom
**************************
See article: AS U.S. RELATIONS WITH U.N. LANGUISH AT A LOW POINT, IS CLINTON OR CONGRESS TO BLAME?
BY Judith Miller,New York Times, Thursday, August 5,1999
‘At least with Reagan we knew where we stood, says a U.N. official."
Book: "Act of Creation, The Founding of the United Nations: A Story of Super Powers, Secret Agents, Wartime Allies & Enemies and Their Quest for a Peaceful World" by Stephen Schlesinger
Book: "Global Lies? Propaganda, the UN and World Order" by Mark D. Alleyne
Book: "Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos" by Dore Gold
Book: "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth" by Andrew Thomson
****************
-Kofi A. Annan Secretary-General of the United Nations (www.un.org)
recommended sites:
Back to Chrestomathy Next Page