Former SDLP leader John Hume has told an audience at Boston College that he "might have been sent to a psychiatrist" if he had suggested in 1945 that one day Europe would be free of war and would have respect for diversity.
Mr Hume also said that the tolerance of diversity upon which the US was built could create world peace if people respected it. Mr Hume was speaking at Boston College to honour the life of its former student, Dr Martin Luther King jnr.
Mr Hume made his speech on Martin Luther King Day, a US public holiday to celebrate Dr King's life.
In his keynote speech at Boston College's 21st commemoration of the Dr King's life, Mr Hume described the US civil rights leader as "one of my greatest heroes" who had inspired the Northern Ireland civil rights movement.
Mr Hume joked with the audience about his reputation for repeating similar public speeches. "To put it mildly, I do not have a reputation as someone who has new and original thought in every speech," he said, before telling a story he "likes to use frequently" about standing on a bridge between Germany and France during his first visit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in 1979 and being struck by how much had been achieved since the horrors of the two World Wars.
"If, in 1945, I had said: 'Don't worry, the historical conflicts of the peoples of Europe are ended and in a number of years you will all be united in a European union, I might have been sent to a psychiatrist," he said.
Mr Hume said that there were three principles at the heart of the European Union that could also be applied to the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland: respecting difference, building institutions that recognise that difference, and allowing a healing process.
He said he first learned of these principles when he visited Abraham Lincoln's grave and saw the three Latin words E Pluribus Unum or, From Many We Are One.