Conor Cruise O'Brien Quotes

The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail, and to be seen to fail.

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.

You can safely appeal to the United Nations in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.