“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. If there is something you are expected to do, but don't want to do, or even have done for you, you can safely appeal to the UN in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.”
New Republic, November 4, 1985
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Conor Cruise O'Brien 9
Irish politician 1917–2008Related quotes
“Life grows short. Have you done everything you wanted to do, or have you played it safe?”
Shit Magnet: One Man's Miraculous Ability to Absorb the World's Guilt (Feral House, 2002)

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On the importance of charity - "SCATTERED! Eleven Children, One Wife, No Home" http://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/1273/scattered-eleven-children-one-wife-no-home.html Nigerian Voice (October 9 2009)

“Don't let things you can't do stop you from doing things you can.”

Interruption from the Right: 'Yet you signed for fifty-one years'
Speech in the Reichstag (24 June 1929), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 438
1920s

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 50