UN General Assembly
1954

96. It is significant that President Eisenhower chose to speak before the General Assembly. This body, in which all the sixty Member States are represented, has been variously called an international debating society, the forum of humanity, and the town meeting of the world. It is weak where the Security Council is strong, at least on paper. It has none of the outward attributes of authority, but it has power over the hearts and minds of men out of all proportion to the actual authority it wields. Far from being a Parliament of Man, it has authority only to make recommendations without being able to venture upon coercive sanctions. 97. I have said of the United Nations in general that it has become a vessel too frail to serve as the repository of the hopes and fears of humanity in the atomic age. Lacking something better, we have, at least in the General Assembly, a repository of the good sense and good conscience of humanity.