60th Anniversary of the United Nations

This Organization was founded in the ashes of a war that brought untold sorrow to mankind.  Today we must look again into our collective conscience, and ask ourselves whether we are doing enough.  Yet today the rule of law is at risk around the world.  Again and again, we see fundamental laws shamelessly disregarded—those that ordain respect for innocent life, for civilians—especially children.

Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General, Address to the General Assembly, 21 September 2004

Oh, what a great day this can be in history! There were many who doubted that agreement could ever be reached by ... countries differing so much in race and religion, in language and culture... History will honor you [for writing the UN Charter]... If we had had this charter a few years ago — and, above all, the will to use it — millions now dead would be alive. If we should falter in the future in our will to use it, millions now living will surely die... That we now have this Charter at all is a great wonder.

Harry Truman U.S. President, 25 June 1945, on the eve of the signing of the UN Charter

The UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration... is to this day the greatest relief operation ever launched. It put the world on its feet. Run by Governor Herbert Lehman of New York, it was the most extraordinary operation. It simply picked up countries... and put them on the road again. You never hear about it now for some reason, but this was an American idea. It was a tremendously far-sighted plan. And the whole UN system...the specialized agencies, the International Court of Justice, this was a great blueprint for a better future.

Sir Brian Urquhart, 19 March 1996, Member of the U.K. delegation to UN Founding Conference in 1945, former Under-Secretary General of the United Nations

The United Nations exists not merely to preserve the peace, but also to make change — even radical change — possible without violent upheaval. The United Nations has no vested interest in the status quo...The objective of any who sincerely believe in peace clearly must be to exhaust every honorable recourse in the effort to save the peace. The world has had ample evidence that war begets only conditions that beget further war.

Ralph Bunche
Member of the U.S. Delegation to the UN Founding Conference in San Francisco Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and Nobel Prize Laureate, 1950

The one supreme objective for the future... for each Nation individually, and for all the United Nations, can be summed up in one word: Security... And that means not only physical security... It means also economic security, social security, moral security — in a family of Nations....The best interests of each Nation, large and small, demand that all freedom-loving Nations shall join together in a just and durable system of peace... And an equally basic essential to peace is a decent standard of living for all individual men and women and children in all Nations. Freedom from fear is eternally linked with freedom from want.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
U.S. President, February 1945, in a speech to Congress promoting the concept of the United Nations

Because we want to live in a world which is not dominated by a division of people who live on the cutting edge of a new economy and others who live on the bare edge of survival, we must be involved ...

Bill Clinton
U.S. President and United Nations Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery

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. It is the nearest thing we have to a representative institution that can address the interests of all States, and all peoples. Through this universal, indispensable instrument of human progress, States can serve the interests of their citizens by recognizing common interests and pursuing them in unity.

Kofi Annan
United Nations Secretary-General Nobel Lecture, Oslo, Norway, 10 December 2001