Boutros Boutros-Ghali quotes

Only stupid people don't change their minds. (Boutros Boutros-Ghali)
A genocide in Africa has not received the same attention that genocide in Europe or genocide in Turkey or genocide in other part of the world. There is still this kind of basic discrimination against the African people and the African problems.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
The lesson I learned in Cairo still applies. The only way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
For us, genocide was the gas chamber - what happened in Germany. We were not able to realize that with the machete you can create a genocide.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
I believe it will take time to find a solution to the problem. Thus we must have patience.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
The problem is when you are writing something in retrospective, it needs a lot of courage not to change, or you will forget a certain reality, and you will just take in consideration your view today.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
I will continue to work for the advancement of freedoms in Egypt and the Arab world until I drop dead. ... Education itself - which can and should play an important role in the apprenticeship of tolerance and respect for other people - sometimes encourages identitarian closure, or even extremist behaviour ... It is therefore vital to ensure that education does not encourage rejection of other people or identitarian closure, but that on the contrary it encourages knowledge and respect for other cultures, other religions and other ways of being and living.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
While the broad principles of democracy are universal, the fact remains that their application varies considerably ... We are at the beginning of the road, at the very beginning. We still have a long way to go.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
There are signs that the system of collective security established in San Francisco nearly 50 years ago [at the founding of the UN] is finally beginning to work as conceived . . . We are on the way to achieving a workable international system.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
The failure of the United Nations - My failure is maybe, in retrospective, that I was not enough aggressive with the members of the Security Council.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
In Yugoslavia, I'd asked for additional forces too. I even went to meet the French prime minister, and I proposed additional forces... Nobody wanted to send troops. (Boutros Boutros-Ghali)
We were not realizing that, with just a machete, you can do a genocide.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
I used to say I never talk about my successor, neither about my predecessor.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
There is a greater fatigue concerning the African problem today than five or 10 years ago. The situation now in Africa is worse today than it was 10 years ago.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
The change began in Somalia, where we discovered that we were involved in an operation where there was no peace, so there was no more a peacekeeping operation because there was no peace.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
For President Clinton, according to this discussion I had with him, Rwanda was a marginal problem.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
No, because Disneyland is not an independent state.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, over 100 major conflicts around the world have left some 20 million dead.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
We have entered a time of global transition marked by uniquely contradictory trends. Regional and continental associations of States are evolving ways to deepen cooperation and ease some of the contentious characteristics of sovereign and nationalistic rivalries. National boundaries are blurred by advanced communications and global commerce, and by the decisions of States to yield some sovereign prerogatives to larger, common political associations. At the same time, however, fierce new assertions of nationalism and sovereignty spring up, and the cohesion of States is threatened by brutal ethnic, religious, social, cultural or linguistic strife. Social peace is challenged on the one hand by new assertions of discrimination and exclusion and, on the other, by acts of terrorism seeking to undermine evolution and change through democratic means.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Cultural pluralism is as important as political and multi- party pluralism. Religious, linguistic and cultural pluralism are vitally important hallmarks of a true democracy. We are against cultural hegemony of any sort. Diversity is a mark of a healthy democracy.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
I am Boutros Boutros-Ghali; put down your guns and listen to Bob Marley. (Boutros Boutros-Ghali)
The days of dictatorship are over. ... We have come a long way. Millions of Egyptians and Iraqis have cast their votes at the ballot box. The Palestinians will follow suit.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
So this is why I'm always say happy that somebody mentions Rwanda, because behind Rwanda, we have Africa.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
But at the beginning, our definition of the genocide was what happened to Armenia in 1917 or 1919, it's happened to the Jew in Europe, and we were not realizing - In our point of view, they have not the tools to do a genocide.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
The concept of peace is easy to grasp; that of international security is more complex, for a pattern of contradictions has arisen here as well. As major nuclear Powers have begun to negotiate arms reduction agreements, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction threatens to increase and conventional arms continue to be amassed in many parts of the world. As racism becomes recognized for the destructive force it is and as apartheid is being dismantled, new racial tensions are rising and finding expression in violence. Technological advances are altering the nature and the expectation of life all over the globe. The revolution in communications has united the world in awareness, in aspiration and in greater solidarity against injustice. But progress also brings new risks for stability: ecological damage, disruption of family and community life, greater intrusion into the lives and rights of individuals.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali