NUCLEAR WAR QUOTES
quotations about nuclear war
Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Address to the United Nations General Assembly, September 25, 1961
Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Newsweek Magazine, March 10, 1947
The atom bomb fueled the entire world that came after it. It showed that indiscriminate killing and indiscriminate homicide on a mass level was possible ... whereas if you look at warfare up until that point, you had to see somebody to shoot them or maim them, you had to look at them. You don't have to do that anymore.
BOB DYLAN
Rolling Stone, May 3, 2007
In nuclear war all men are cremated equal.
DEXTER GORDON
attributed, 100 Common Misconceptions About Dexter Gordon
A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely.
RONALD REAGAN
State of the Union Address, 1984
No wars, in the war-logged record of our species, have been terminal. Until now, when we know that nuclear war would be the death of our planet. It is beyond belief that any governments--those brief political figures--arrogate to themselves the right to stop history, at their discretion.
MARTHA GELLHORN
The Face of War
Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER
interview, The Decision to Drop the Bomb
The arms race is a race between nuclear weapons and ourselves.
MARTIN AMIS
"Introduction: Thinkability", Einstein's Monsters
One must expect a war between U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. which will begin with the total destruction of London. I think the war will last 30 years, and leave a world without civilised people, from which everything will have to build afresh--a process taking (say) 500 years.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
letter to Gamel Brenan, September 1, 1945
Our moral imperative is to work with all our powers for that day when the children of the world grow up without the fear of nuclear war.
RONALD REAGAN
attributed, Reagan's Secret War
For the love of God, for the love of your children and of the civilization to which you belong, cease this madness. You are mortal men. You are capable of error. You have no right to hold in your hands -- there is no one wise enough and strong enough to hold in his hands -- destructive power sufficient to put an end to civilized life on a great portion of our planet.
GEORGE F. KENNAN
Boston Globe, March 18, 2005
The children of the nuclear age, I think, were weakened in their capacity to love. Hard to love, when you're bracing yourself for impact. Hard to love, when the loved one, and the lover, might at any instant become blood and flames, along with everybody else.
MARTIN AMIS
Experience
Prolific irony -- For 8 years, the finger on the button that could end the world belonged to a president who couldn't pronounce the word "nuclear".
T. RAFAEL CIMINO
Mid Ocean
Now, for the moment, we are safe. The only kind of international violence that worries most people in the developed countries is terrorism: from imminent heart attack to a bad case of hangnail in fifteen years flat. We are very lucky people--but we need to use the time we have been granted wisely, because total war is only sleeping. All the major states are still organized for war, and all that is needed for the world to slide back into a nuclear confrontation is a twist of the kaleidoscope that shifts international relations into a new pattern of rival alliances.
GWYNNE DYER
War: The Lethal Custom
The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.
CARL SAGAN
attributed, Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life After Communism
The atom bomb was no "great decision." It was used in the war, and for your information, there were more people killed by fire bombs in Tokyo than dropping of the atomic bombs accounted for. It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.
HARRY S. TRUMAN
in reply to a question at a symposium, Columbia University, NYC, April 28, 1959
Can the effects of nuclear war be related to our history in a meaningful way? Can they be compared to past catastrophes? If the answer to the two previous questions is yes, then moral analysis and evaluation can at least begin. Furthermore, we can employ the categories and concepts of previous moral thought about human conflict and, in particular, just war theory. If, however, nuclear war is fundamentally different, genuinely new under the sun, then new categories and a new conceptual framework might well be required.
JAMES W. CHILD
Nuclear War: The Moral Dimension
There has never been a nuclear war, but the general consensus of what would happen in the event of one is a searing scenario that is worse than 20 Harveys and 20 Sept. 11 attacks strung together in a tapestry of terror. Consider that millions of Americans would perish within hours, and thousands more would be sickened for years from radioactive fallout. In an all-out exchange, the sun would be blotted out, temperatures would drop and crops would not be able to grow. We would literally starve in the darkness of nuclear winter.
VIN MORABITO
"Nuclear war is not an option", Observer-Reporter, August 3, 2017
The living will envy the dead.
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV
speaking of nuclear war, "Hiding from the Bomb--Again", Harper's, August 1979
The news today about 'Atomic bombs' is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope 'this will ensure peace'. But one good thing may arise out of it, I suppose, if the write-ups are not overheated: Japan ought to cave in. Well we're in God's hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
letter to Christopher Tolkien, August 9, 1945