A Quote by Atal Bihari Vajpayee
The UN's unique legitimacy flows from a universal perception that it pursues a larger purpose than the interests of one country or a small group of countries.
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All small countries have the same problems and concerns about being protected from larger countries and their influences.
I believe we should try to move away from the vocabulary and attitudes which shape the stereotyping of developed and developing country approaches to human rights issues. We are collective custodians of universal human rights standards, and any sense that we fall into camps of "accuser" and "accused" is absolutely corrosive of our joint purposes. The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the "victim" mode.
I think it is natural that every country has to take care of its interests, but there are some interests that are common to all countries. There are some human interests, or we need also international cooperation. We've sometimes confused it with dictation.
The revelation is that when you lift the curtain, history is decided by a very small group of people, and their own interests guide their actions, not necessarily the laws or principles we think our country rides on.
They believe the less votes the better. Republicans like to suppress votes because they believe they do better in small turnouts. Characteristically, Democrats would rather lose an election with a huge turnout than win one with a small turnout because we think that the values of democracy have to be placed above the interests of the party. The reason that Republicans are such failures at governing is because they place the interests of their party ahead of the interests of the country.
In relations between the states ... the interests of the country should be correlated with the interests of other countries, and compromise is to be found when resolving the most complex issues.
When awareness expands, events that seem random actually aren't. A larger purpose is trying to unfold through you. When you become aware of that purpose- which is unique for each person- you become like an architect who has been handed the blueprint.
The challenge for UNFPA is to help countries as we always have with no agenda of our own; with sensitivity towards unique cultural values; with an infinite willingness to work with whatever is positive; and with a determination to help countries and people turn universal principles into concrete action.
At the time it seemed like there was a loosening of culture, there was a counterculture, there was a radicalization. I think we totally misread what was really going on in the world, that somehow a small group of people could mobilize a larger group of people.
Today, parliaments are more important because of the need of legitimacy, of the popular legitimacy, of public opinion legitimacy of politics. Parliaments are, at the end of the day, the only true legitimacy.
The larger the unit of capital present, the easier the transaction called emission of credit. Centralized lending of this kind (which is today universal) actively promotes the absorption of the small man by the great, the reduction of small property owners to a proletarian condition.
Because we're on the outside of everything, and we're a small group of countries - Scandinavia , we have a unique vantage point. We are extremely good at focusing our ideas into art and music and design that fits a global state of mind. Being observers of the rest of the world allows us to express something pure that goes beyond borders, beyond planets.
The world is divided into three kinds of people: A very small group that makes things happen; a somewhat larger group that watches things happen; and a great multitude that never knows what has happened.
The values that East Asian culture upholds, such as the primacy of group interests over individual interests, support the total group effort necessary to develop rapidly.
The EU is not a country and it's not going to become a country, in my view, now or ever in the future. It is a group of countries working together.
The notion that the UN is some sort of dispassionate body that, “does right” and just pursues everybody’s best interests is a fantasy. Each individual nation will be pursuing their best interests. That’s the normal behavior of nation-states. It shouldn’t surprise us, but neither should we go to them for permission to do what’s in our national interests.
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