Carlos P. Romulo Quotes

Mine was a good race. Ours was a good country. I loved every foot of it that I knew...I had been reared in a wonderful country among wonderful people and I wanted all the rest of the world to know and respect the Philippines.

Nations will rise and fall, but equality remains the ideal. The univeral aim is to achieve respect for the entire human race, not for the dominant few.

For freedom would not be easy. It never is. It would be more difficult for the Philippines than for many countries, because we had to face the fact that the islands, although potentially rich, had not tapped their resources. We were a poor country and a small one, and we could not afford to be hurled unprepared into competition with countries larger and richer and more powerful and far better trained. The Tydings-McDuffie Act means we could prepare.

To do my best, to increase and never lessen my country's pride was the underlying motivation of all I might attempt. ... I had to be outstanding, to make the greatest effort to win, to prove I was capable not in spite of having been born Filipino but because I was a Filipino.

This proved to me that no matter how diametrically opposed your views may be from another's if you can succeed in knowing him as a human being you can understand each other.

I knew nothing at all of the art of diplomacy, which I have since diagnosed as the ability to make the nastiest possible comment in the nicest possible way.

Agreements in the organizations of world power are never reached on the floor. They are made in the delegates' lounge and corridors long before the voting begins.

From this time on, my life would be written in headlines, but I am not concerned with them. It was the marginal notations of the heart that were most important to the man within.

I was convinced that luck was a matter of knowing what one wanted and then being willing to work to make the wish come true.

OTHER lives may find their happiest moments infiltrated with tragedy, and their proudest touched with comedy. This had almost invariably been true of mine. My proudest hour found me, the newly elected president of the United Nations, perched atop three thick New York City telephone books given me in lieu of a cushion that I might see and be seen by the delegates below the podium.

Let us teach our people again to be proud that they are Filipinos. Let us teach them to realize anew that being a Filipino means having as rich and noble a heritage of language, culture, patriotism and heroic deeds as any nation on earth. Let us teach a steadfast faith in Divine Providence, a stable family institution, the unhampered enjoyment of civil liberties, the advantages of constitutional government, the potentials of a rich and spacious land.

One need not bellow to be believed. Ears seal automatically against anger, and unreason takes over when an argument becomes a tirade.

Don Alejandro cut in with advice I have never forgotten. "It is only when a man knows reason is not on his side that he uses his fists.

All in all, it is a good life we are living, in a good world filled with good friends.

For my grandchildren . . . and all children - this book is written with hopes of the time to come, when no child shall lie down in terror or waken to hunger, but shall know himself as a being of unique value in a safer and kindlier world.

The presidency of the United Nations was not thrust upon me overnight. I had to grow up to the measurements it demanded of a proponent of peace. This was done session by session, step by step. It entailed trips halfway around the world, again and again. It demanded nights without sleep, studying, writing, poring over documents; days without rest; and always the curb on the temper and the willingness to give and to receive.

A strengthened national spirit can provide the motive power to rise our people from the depths and ... pour new life and vigor in the national system.
The reinvigoration of the national spirit must take place in the grass roots, in every city, town and barrio in the Philippines, and it must start among our own people ... To be a worthy citizen of the world one must first prove himself to be a good Filipino.

There should be no inferiors and no superiors for true world friendship.

Among the lessons learned in my lifetime is the ease with which corruption can enter high places in the mask of friendship. Sometimes the recipient is not aware of the barbed hook under the gift; often, he who gives may not know but be the unwitting agent of a craftier mind.

I feel like a Gold surrounded by Silver!

Our world is constantly in change and the great change is always toward freedom. When we speak of freedom we speak of equality. Nations will rise and fall but equality remains the ideal.