YouSaid · the spoken record

William Clinton

lines on the record
64
first
1993-09-24
most recent
1994-09-24
sittings or episodes
2
sources
un-general-debate

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  1. “It is human history." We will work to strengthen the free market democracies by revitalizing our economy at home, by opening world trade through GATT, the North American Free Trade Agreement and other accords, and by updating our shared institutions, asking with you and answering the hard questions about whether they are adequate to the present challenges. We will support the consolidation of market democracy where it is taking new root, as in the States of the former Soviet Union and all over Latin America, and we seek to foster the practices of good government that distribute the benefits of democracy and economic growth fairly to all people. We will work to reduce the threat from regimes that are hostile to democracy and to support liberalization of non-democratic States when they are willing to live in peace with the rest of us.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)

  2. “But we now know clearly that throughout the world, from Poland to Eritrea, from Guatemala to South Korea, there is an enormous yearning among people who wish to be the masters of their own economic and political lives. Where it matters most and where we can make the greatest difference, we will therefore patiently and firmly align ourselves with that yearning. Forty-eighth session - 27 September l993 9 Today, there are still those who claim that democracy is simply not applicable to many cultures and that its recent expansion is an aberration, an accident in history that will soon fade away. But I agree with President Roosevelt, who once said: "The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase of human history.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)

  3. “In a new era of peril and opportunity, our overriding purpose must be to expand and strengthen the world’s community of market-based democracies. During the cold war, we sought to contain a threat to the survival of free institutions; now we seek to enlarge the circle of nations that live under those free institutions. For our dream is of a day when the opinions and energies of every person in the world will be given full expression, in a world of thriving democracies that cooperate with each other and live in peace. With this statement, I do not mean to announce some crusade to force our way of life and doing things on others or to replicate our institutions.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)

  4. “We must help our publics to understand this distinction: domestic renewal is an overdue tonic; but isolationism and protectionism are still poison. We must inspire our peoples to look beyond their immediate fears towards a broader horizon. Let me start by being clear about where the United States stands. The United States occupies a unique position in world affairs today: we recognize that and we welcome it. Yet, with the cold war over, I know many people ask whether the United States plans to retreat or remain active in the world; and if active, to what end? Many people are asking that in our own country as well. Let me answer that question as clearly and plainly as I can. The United States intends to remain engaged and to lead. We cannot solve every problem, but we must and will serve as a fulcrum for change and a pivot point for peace.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)

  5. “Indeed, prosperity in each of our nations and regions also depends on active and responsible engagement in a host of shared concerns: for example, a thriving and democratic Russia not only makes the world safer, it also can help to expand the world’s economy; a strong GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) agreement will create millions of jobs world wide; peace in the Middle East, buttressed as it should be by the repeal of outdated United Nations resolutions, can help to unleash that region’s great economic potential and calm a perpetual source of tension in global affairs; and the growing economic power of China - coupled with greater political openness - could bring enormous benefits to all of Asia and to the rest of the world.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)

  6. “The pursuit of self-renewal in many of the world’s largest and most powerful economies - in Europe, in Japan, in North America - is absolutely crucial, because unless the great industrial nations can recapture their robust economic growth, the global economy will languish. Yet the industrial nations also need growth elsewhere in order to lift their own.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)

  7. “But a far-sighted generation of leaders from the United States and elsewhere rallied the world. Their efforts built the institutions of post- -war security and prosperity. We are at a similar moment today. The momentum of the cold war no longer propels us in our daily actions. And with daunting economic and political pressures upon almost every nation represented in this room, many of us are turning to focus greater attention and energy on domestic needs and problems, and we must. But putting each of our economic houses in order cannot mean that we shut our windows to the world.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)

  8. “Let me assure the Assembly that whether they be the plotters of those crimes or the mass murderers who bombed Pan Am flight 103, my Government is determined to see that such terrorists are brought to justice. At this moment of panoramic change, of vast opportunities and troubling threats, we must all ask ourselves what we can and what we should do as a community of nations. We must once again dare to dream of what might be, for our dreams may be within our reach. For that to happen, we must all be willing honestly to confront the challenges of the broader world. That has never been easy. When this Organization was founded 48 years ago, the world’s nations stood devastated by war or exhausted by its expense. There was little appetite for cooperative efforts among nations; most people simply wanted to get on with their lives.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)

  9. “Bloody ethnic, religious and civil wars rage from Angola to the Caucasus to Kashmir. As weapons of mass destruction fall into more hands, even small conflicts can threaten to take on murderous proportions. Hunger and disease continue to take a tragic toll, especially among the world’s children. The malignant neglect of our global environment threatens our children’s health and their very security. The repression of conscience continues in too many nations. And terrorism, which has taken so many innocent lives, assumed a horrifying immediacy for us here when militant fanatics bombed the World Trade Center and planned to attack even this very Hall of peace.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)

  10. “But they also threaten to destroy the insularity and independence of national economies, quickening the pace of change and making many of our people feel more insecure. At the same time, from within nations, the resurgent aspirations of ethnic and religious groups challenge Governments on terms that traditional nation States cannot easily accommodate. These twin forces lie at the heart of the challenges, not only to our national Governments, but also to all our international institutions. They require all of us in this Hall to find new ways to work together more effectively in pursuit of our national interests and to think anew about whether our institutions of international cooperation are adequate to this moment. Thus, as we marvel at this era’s promise of new peace, we must also recognize that serious threats remain.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)

  11. “Now the United States is working with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and others to take that sword down, to lock it away in a secure vault, where we hope and pray it will remain for ever. It is a new era in this Hall as well. The super-Power standoff that for so long stymied the work of the United Nations, almost from its first day, has now yielded to a new promise of practical cooperation. Yet today we must all admit that there are two powerful tendencies working from opposite directions to challenge the authority of nation States everywhere and to undermine the authority of nation States to work together. From beyond nations, economic and technological forces all over the globe are compelling the world towards integration. These forces are fuelling a welcome explosion of entrepreneurship and political liberalization.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)

  12. “It is a moment of miracles. We see Nelson Mandela stand side by side with President de Klerk proclaiming a date for South Africa’s first non-racial elections. We see Russia’s first popularly elected President, Boris Yeltsin, leading his nation on its bold democratic journey. We have seen decades of deadlock shattered in the Middle East as the Prime Minister of Israel and the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization reached past enmity and suspicion to shake each other’s hand and exhilarate the entire world with the hope of peace. We have begun to see the doomsday weapons of nuclear annihilation dismantled and destroyed. Thirty-two years ago President Kennedy warned this Assembly that humanity lived under a nuclear sword of Damocles that hung by the slenderest of threads.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)

  13. “Yet I have followed the work of the United Nations throughout my life, with admiration for its accomplishments, sadness for its failures and the conviction that, through common effort, our generation can take the bold steps needed to redeem the mission entrusted to the United Nations 48 years ago. I pledge to you that my nation remains committed to helping make the United Nations vision a reality. The start of this session of the General Assembly offers us an opportunity to take stock of where we are as common shareholders in the progress of humankind and the preservation of our planet. It is clear that we live at a turning point in human history. Immense and promising changes seem to wash over us every day. The cold war is over. The world is no longer divided into two armed and angry camps. Dozens of new democracies have been born.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)

  14. “Let me first congratulate you, Sir, on your election as President of the General Assembly for this session. Mr. Secretary-General, distinguished representatives and guests, it is a great honour for me to address you and to stand in this great Hall, which symbolizes so much of the twentieth century - its darkest crises and its brightest aspirations. I come before you as the first American President born after the founding of the United Nations. Like most of the people in the world today, I was not even alive during the convulsive world war that convinced humankind of the need for this Organization, nor during the San Francisco Conference that led to its birth.”

    1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)