What Leaders Say About Global Governance

We have the opportunity to forge... a New World Order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.
- George H.W. Bush

We must establish a rule of law, a world rule of law. We have to realize that the world needs policemen who serve the interests of all mankind.
- Ramsey Clark

Resolve that to insure world peace and disarmament among nations, we United Methodist of the Rocky Mountain Conference urge the President and the Congress of the United States, in concert with all other willing nations, to call a World Constitutional Convention to reform the United Nations into a federal, representative world government.
- United Methodist Church, 1983, Rocky Mountain Conference

Details are not crucial; the important point is to find a plan for peace that would be both effective and generally acceptable. If a sufficient effort is made, the effective wisdom of mankind can find the right combination.
- Professor Louis Sohn, Co-author, World Peace Through World Law

It will be just as easy for nations to get along in a republic of the world as it is for us to get along in the republic of the United States.
- Harry S. Truman

Who can limit the extent to which the federative principal may operate effectively?
- Thomas Jefferson

World Federalists hold before us the vision of a unified mankind living in peace under a just world order. ..The head of their program -
- a world under law -
- is realistic and attainable.
- U Thant, U.N. Secretary-General

If we want peace, we must reform, restructure and strengthen the United Nations.
- Dr. John Logue, 1985, Director, Common Heritage Institute

Any scientist can testify that a dead ocean means a dead planet ... No national law, no national precautions can save the planet. The ocean, more than any other part of our planet ... is a classic example of the absolute need for international, global action.
- Thor Heyerdahl

There is no salvation for civilization, or even the human race, other than the creation of a world government.
- Albert Einstein, Scientist

It is obvious that no difficulty in the way of a world government can match the danger of a world without it. -Carl Van Doren

We are convinced that a comprehensive system of security is at the same timea system of universal law and order ensuring the primacy of international law in politics.
- Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet General Secretary, Article in Pravda, September 17, 1987

The only security for Americans today, or for any people, is in the creation of a system of world order that enables nations to retain sovereignty over their own cultures and institutions, but that creates a workable authority for regulating the behavior of nations in their relationships with one another.
- Normal Cousins, President, World Federalist Association

I want to see a fundamental objective of the foreign policy of the United States to be that of supporting and strengthening the United Nations and to seek its development into a federation of all the nations.
- Hubert Humphrey

We need first and foremost a world democracy, a government of this planet for the people and by the people. But the problem is so colossal and unprecedented that few political thinkers even dare to consider it. They feel more at ease discussing the number and strength of missiles. Since government and institutions are so slow and reluctant to do it, we must build the world community through individual commitment and action.
- Robert Muller, Former U.N. Assistant Secy.-Gen., Chancellor, University for Peace

If the rule of law is to govern the community of states and protect it against violations of the international public order, it can only be satisfactorily established by the promulgation of an international penal code and by the permanent functioning of an international criminal jurisdiction.
- Richard Alfaro, 1950, Former President of Panama

Institutions are what nations make of them. If the rule of law is to replace anarchy, international law involves surrender of a certain amount of sovereignty.
- Vernon A. Waiters, U.N. Representative for U.S.A.

There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.
- President Woodrow Wilson

The Federal Republic of Germany has declared in its Constitution its willingness to transfer sovereign rights to supranational organizations and it has placed international law above national law. This expresses the realization that the sovereignty of the individual and of nations can be secured only in larger communities.
- Willy Brandt, Chancellor of West Germany

Unless some effective supranational government can be set up and brought quickly into action, the prospects of peace and human progress are dark and doubtful.
- Winston Churchill

We have reached a turning point in human history where the best option is to transcend the limits of national sovereignty and to move toward the building of a world community in which all sectors of the human family can participate. Thus we look to the development of a system of world law and a world order based upon transitional federal government.
- Human Manifesto II

The world no longer has a choice between force and law. If civilization is to survive, it must choose the rule of law.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

This planet is in bad political shape and is administered appallingly. An outer-space inspection team would undoubtedly give us an F (failure) or a triple D (dumb, deficient and dangerous) in planetary management. Our world is afflicted by a good dozen conflicts almost permanently. Its skies, lands and oceans are infested with atomic weapons which cost humanity $850 Billiona year, while so many poor people are still dying of hunger on this planet. And yet, I have seen the UN become universal and prevent many conflicts. I have seen the dangerous decolonization page turned quickly and with infinitely less bloodshed than in Europe and the Americas in preceding centuries. I have seen a flowering expansion of international cooperation in 32 UN specialized agencies and world programs.
- Robert Muller, Former U.N. Assistant Secy.-Gen.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
- Christ in the Sermon on the Mount

I am convinced that the Great Framer of the World will so develop it that it becomes one nation, so that armies and navies are no longer necessary. I believe at some future day the nations of the earth will agree upon some sort of congress which will take cognizance of international questions of difficulty and whose decisions will be as binding as the decisions of our Supreme Court are upon us.
- President Ulysses S. Grant

The United States ... is the heir of a western civilization which has long been preoccupied with the art and science of government. If the United States does not take the initiative, no one will.
- Albert Einstein

If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.
- Gen. Douglas MacArthur

Sovereignty is the worse obstacle to the organization of peace ... The federal principle is the only way forward.
- Lord Lothian, British Parliamentarian

You don't have to spend all your time discussing what weapons you are going to be allowed to use to massacre millions of innocent people. An entirely new piece of political machinery is needed. I want a federal world authority for peace with justice throughout the world.
- Lord Beveridge

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. We must think anew and act anew.
- Abraham Lincoln, U.S. President

Today the universal common good poses problems of world-wide dimensions which cannot be adequately tackled or solved except by the effort of public authorities endowed with a wideness of powers, structure and means of the same proportion; that is ... on a world-wide basis.
- Pope John XXIII, "Pacem in Terris"

It was felt by the Statesmen who framed the Constitution, and by the people who adopted it that it was necessary that many of the rights of sovereignty which the States then possessed should be ceded to the General Government.
- Chief Justice Taney, U.S. Supreme Court

What is called for is total disarmament -
- universal, enforceable and complete.
- John J. McCloy, Former U.S. Asst. Secretary of War

It is high time for humanity to accept and work out the full consequence of the total global and interdependent nature of our planetary home and of our species. Our survival and further progress will depend largely on the advent of global visions and of global education in all countries of the world.
- Robert Muller, U.N. Assistant Sec.-Gen.

The exercise by some nation-states of their unlimited right to lie, assassinate, terrorize and wage war, and to justify these actions in the name of "national security" causes man to despair for the future of our planet. But there is a solution to this problem of international anarchy: A common security system for all nations under enforceable world law.
- Myron W. Kronisch, Campaign for U.N. Reform

The only basis for a peace system is a pooling of sovereignty for supranational purposes, that is the creation of a common nationhood, above but entirely separate from the diverse local nationhoods. -Philip Henry Kerr, Marquis of Lothian; Surge Memorial Lecture, 1935

Why are we raising so insistently the question of a universal system of international peace and security? Because we cannot reconcile ourselves to the situation in which the world finds itself on the threshold of the third millennium -threatened with destruction, in a state of constant tension, an atmosphere of suspicion and discord, expending the enormous resources, labor and talent of millions of people in order to increase mutual mistrust and fear. People can talk as much as they like about the need for halting the arms race and eliminating militarism, and about cooperation, but nothing will change unless we start to act.
- Mikhail Gorbachev -Soviet General Secretary

We have nothing to lose except everything. So let's go ahead. This is the wager of our generation. If we are to fail, it is better, in any case, to have stood on the side of those who choose life than on the side of those who are destroying it.
- Albert Camus, Author

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
- Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the World.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Locksley Hall," 1842

Mankind's desire for peace can be realized only by the creation of a world government. With all my heart I believe that the world's present system of sovereign nations can only lead to barbarism, war, and inhumanity.
- Albert Einstein, Scientist

All mankind would be grateful for all time to the statesman who could bring about a new structure of international society. -Theodore Roosevelt, Former U.S. President

Science has made unrestricted national sovereignty incompatible with human survival. The only possibilities are now world government or death. – Bertrand Russell, Philosopher

Unless some effective supranational government can be set up and brought quickly into action, the prospects of peace and human progress are dark and doubtful.
- Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister

I truly believe that historians of the future will look back upon this decade as the key turning point when the world conceived of itself for the first time as a truly global civilization.
- Albert Gore, Vice President

Our goals are those of the U.N.'s founders, who sought to replace a world at war with one where the rule of law would prevail, where human rights were honored, where development would blossom, where conflict would give way to freedom from violence.
- President Ronald Reagan

Government is the thing. Law is the thing. Not brotherhood, not international cooperation, not security councils that can stop war only by waging it...Where does security lie, anyway
- security against the thief, the murderer? In brotherly love? Not at all. It lies in government.
- E.B. White

A federation of all humanity, together with a sufficient means of social justice to ensure health, education, and a rough equality of opportunity, would mean such a release and increase of human energy as to open a new phase in human history.
- H.G. Wells, noted historian

I have long believed the only way peace can be achieved is through World Government.
- Jawaharal Nehru, Former Prime Minister of India

The international community should support a system of laws to regularize international relations and maintain the peace in the same manner that law governs national order.
- Pope John Paul II

The goal of the World Federalists is peace through unity of government. We must support their vision of oneness in diversity, for it is the salvation of mankind.
- Jean Stapleton, Actress

My vision of a better world would be one under the control of a strong United Nations, one that truly has the support of all countries in the world. Only an effective world government could provide sufficient law and have the power to control the unboundaried destructive forces of pollution and war. I will continue to be a leader in the World Federalist Association.
- Lloyd Bridges, Actor

For nearly five decades the World Federalists have worked to promote a strengthened UN and more effective institutions of global governance. I offer my personal endorsement. Now a great opportunity has opened for the realization of the dreams of the UN's founders.
- Walter Cronkite

World Government is not only possible, it is inevitable; and when it comes, it will appeal to patriotism in its truest, in its only sense, the patriotism of men who love their national heritages so deeply that they wish to preserve them in safety for the common good.
- Peter Ustinov, Renowned Actor

Once again the United Nations is poised to be an instrument for positive change in a disorderly world.We must do more than talk about a new world order, we must seize the opportunities before us.
- President William Jefferson Clinton

We have a choice. Humanity either can learn to manage the risks of living together under a law system or can prepare to die together under the war system.
- Myron W. Kronisch, Campaign for U.N. Reform

We must create world-wide law and law enforcement as we outlaw world-wide war and weapons.
- President John F. Kennedy

If we do not want to die together in war, we must learn to live together in peace.
- President Harry S. Truman

I do feel that some minimum of global government to abolish war and to cope with pollution, is absolutely necessary.
- Arnold Toynbee, Historian

The central task of our time is to evolve a new system of world order based on principles of peace and justice.
- Richard Falk, Princeton University

World government is not an "ultimate goal" but an immediate necessity. In fact, it has been overdue since 1914. The convulsions of the past decades are the clear symptoms of a dead and decaying political system.
- Emery Reves, The Anatomy of Peace

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead

World federation is an idea that will not die. More and more people are coming to realize that peace must be more than an interlude if we are to survive; that peace is a product of law and order; that law is essential if the force of arms is not to rule the world.
- William O. Douglas, Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice


- thanks to Debbie Metke for collection of quotes