World government is the notion of a common political authority for all of humanity, yielding a global government and a single state. Such a government could come into existence either through violent and compulsory world domination or through peaceful and voluntary supranational union.

Quotes

  • To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family tradition, national patriotism, and religious dogmas.
    • George Brock Chisholm, former Director of the U.N. World Health Organization, Psychiatry (1946) also as quoted by Sovereignty Education and Defense Ministry (SEDM) Famous Quotes About Rights and Liberty, Form #08.001 (2014).
  • People of the world, it is time for you to awake, to see the goal you want to reach and to go straight to it. You are harried, decimated, impoverished by the absence of world government. Each nation is a law unto itself, which means lawlessness. Wars are caused by this state of things. Kings and certain other privileged classes may reap distinction, reward in money and the gratification of vengeance; YOUR portion will be slain husbands, heartbroken widows, orphaned children, burden of taxes, harder conditions of labor, and the destruction of your business. Do not wait, therefore, for your politicians to move. Act yourselves! Do it now!
  • In my opinion the only salvation for civilization and the human race lies in the creation of a world government, with security of nations founded upon law. As long as sovereign states continue to have separate armaments and armament secrets, new world wars will be inevitable.
  • There is no salvation for civilization, or even the human race, other than the creation of a world government.
    • Albert Einstein as quoted by Charles Kegley, World Politics: Trend and Transformation (2008) p. 537.
  • There is an increasing awareness of the need for some form of global government.
  • I am conscientiously, and have been from the beginning, an advocate of what the society represented by you is trying to carry out, and nothing would afford me greater happiness than to know that, as I believe will be the case, 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. It is a dream of mine that some such solution may be.
  • Influential individuals and groups are pressing for global economic co-operation, global taxes to support the backward territories, a global army and a world government, even for a world-wide moral consciousness. Whatever the future prospects of these recommendations, there is no doubt that the tactics, the methods, the announced aims, fall under the category of social engineering...
    • Thomas Molnar, The Decline of the Intellectual (1961) Ch. 7 "Planetary Coexistence".
  • Renunciation of freedom implies that the collectivity will be endowed with all that the individual gives up as too burdensome, risky, incalculable. The bargain is an alluring one, since man is always strongly tempted to discard freedom in favor of security and material benefits. The "elites" too would find their advantage since, whether on the Left or on the Right, they no longer believe in democracy but only in a paternalistic directorate, be it called managers, experts, planners, world government, ubiquitous agencies, or any other network. Their condition would be just as permanent as the order of world society itself.
    • Thomas Molnar, The Decline of the Intellectual (1961) Ch. 11 "Intellectual and Philosopher".
  • Future peace, security and ordered progress of the world demand a world federation of free nations, and on no other basis can the problems of the world be solved. Such a world federation would ensure the freedom of its constituent nations, the prevention of aggression and exploitation of one nation over another, the protection of national minorities, the advancement of all backward areas and peoples, and the pooling of the world's resources for the common good of all. On the establishment of such a world federation, disarmament would be practicable in all countries, national armies, navies and air forces would no longer be necessary, and a world federal defense force would keep the peace and prevent aggression. ...The Committee regretfully realizes, however, despite the tragic and overwhelming lessons of the war and the perils that overhang the world, the Governments of few countries are yet prepared to take this inevitable step towards world federation.
    • Jawaharlal Nehru & the All-India Congress Committee, (Aug. 8, 1942) as quoted by Bhagwan Manu, The Peacemakers: India's Quest For One World (2012) p. 1894.
  • For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
    Saw a Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
    ...
    Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and
    the battle-flags were furled
    In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
    There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
    And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
  • There are some things which a world government could do better than national or state governments. A world government could compel peace among the nations; but it could not efficiently prescribe the character of sewers to be installed by the city of Pittsburgh, Pa., or Des Moines, la. There are some things a national government can do better than a state or city government. But we do not want to leave it to the national government to prescribe the character of telephone service our city shall have. I do not want to leave it to Congress to determine the time I shall retire at night. There are some things which might well be left to a world government, there are others which can be cared for better by our national government, and others by the state government, and still others by the county, and city, and family. And there are a few matters that even the individual himself can best perform, strange as it may seem to some. The real problem is how to secure wise regulation. Will a strong centralized government bring the best results, or is the federal plan—joining national and state control—preferable? The issue concerns the method of government, one of the profound problems at the basis of all organized human life.
    • Clifford Thorne, Address before the National Association of Railway Commissioners (Oct. 23, 1915) Traffic World, Vol. 16 Traffic Service Corporation (1915) p. 867.
  • We live... in an age of law and an age of reason, and age in which we can get along with our neighbors. ...It will be just as easy for nations to get along in a republic of the world as it is for you to get along in the republic of the United States. Now, if Kansas and Colorado have a quarrel over a watershed they don't call out the national guard in each state and go to war over it. They bring suit in the Supreme Court and abide by its decision. There isn't a reason in the world why we can't do that internationally. There were two documents signed at San Francisco. One of them was the charter of the United Nations. The other was the World Court. It will require the ratification of both of those Charters, and the putting of them into effect, if we expect to have world peace for future generations. This is one of the tasks which have been assigned to me. I am accepting the responsibility. I am going to try to carry it out.
    • Harry S. Truman Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman (June 28, 1945), Vol. 1.
  • I am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself. We always get at second hand our notions about systems of government; and high tariff and low tariff; and prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace and the glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and approval of the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs concerning the nature of cats; and our ideas as to whether the murder of helpless wild animals is base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter of religious and political parties; and our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares and the Arthur Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys. We get them all at second hand, we reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the way we are made. It is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we can't change it. And whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have been taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that can persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion. In morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment and associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted to wash. ...It took several thousand years to convince our fine race—including every splendid intellect in it—that there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken several thousand years to convince that same fine race—including every splendid intellect in it—that there is no such person as Satan; it has taken several centuries to remove perdition from the Protestant Church's program of post-mortem entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can; and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will still be burning babies in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes down from his perch. We are The Reasoning Race. We can't prove it by the above examples, and we can't prove it by the miraculous "histories"... I feel that our fetish is safe for three centuries yet.
  • It is obvious that no difficulty in the way of world government can match the danger of a world without it.
  • History is now choosing the founders of the World Federation. Any person who can be among that number and fails to do so has lost the noblest opportunity of a lifetime.
    • Carl Van Doren as quoted by Nicholas Hagger, The World Government (2010).
  • We shall have world government, whether or not we like it. The question is only whether world government will be achieved by consent or by conquest.
  • There can be little question that the attainment of a federation of all humanity, together with a sufficient measure of social justice, to ensure health, education, and a rough equality of opportunity to most of the children born into the world, would mean such a release and increase of human energy as to open a new phase in human history. The enormous waste caused by military preparation and the mutual annoyance of competing great powers, and the still more enormous waste due to the under-productiveness of great masses of people, either because they are too wealthy for stimulus or too poor for efficiency, would cease. There would be a vast increase in the supply of human necessities, a rise in the standard of life and in what is considered a necessity, a development of transport and every kind of convenience; and a multitude of people would be transferred from low-grade production to such higher work as art of all kinds, teaching, scientific research, and the like. All over the world there would be a setting free of human capacity, such as has occurred hitherto only in small places and through precious limited phases of prosperity and security. Unless we are to suppose that spontaneous outbreaks of supermen have occurred in the past, it is reasonable to conclude that the Athens of Pericles, the Florence of the Medici, Elizabethan England, the great deeds of Asoka, the Tang and Ming periods in art, are but samples of what a whole world of sustained security would yield continuously and cumulatively. Without supposing any change in human quality, but merely its release from the present system of inordinate waste, history justifies this expectation.

See also

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