"And just at that instant there rose as if from the bowels of the earth
a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one. It was a sunrise
such as the world had never seen, a great green supersun climbing in a
fraction of a second to a height of more than eight thousand feet, rising
ever higher until it touched the clouds, lighting up earth and sky all
around with dazzling luminosity. Up it went, a great wall of fire about
a mile in diameter, changing colors as it kept shooting upward, from deep
purple to orange, expanding, growing bigger, rising as it was expanding,
an elemental force freed from its bonds after being chained for billions
of years."
William L. Laurence, New York Times, August 26, 1945, Account of
the Trinity Test on 16 July 1945
"We can sum it up in one sentence: Our technical civilization has just
reached its greatest level of savagery. We will have to choose, in the
more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent
use of our scientific conquests.......Before the terrifying prospects now
available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only
goal worth struggling for. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be
made by all peoples to their governments -- a demand to choose definitively
between hell and reason."
Albert Camus, Combat, 8 August 1945
"We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead. That is
our business. Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope
which, seized upon with faith, can work out a salvation. If we fail, then
we have damned every man to be the slave of fear. Let us not deceive ourselves:
we must elect world peace or world destruction."
Bernard Baruch, Speech to UN Atomic Energy Commission, 14 August
1946
"There are plenty of problems in the world, many of them interconnected.
But there is no problem which compares with this central, universal problem
of saving the human race from extinction."
John Foster Dulles, Speech to UN General Assembly, 1952
"The survivors would envy the dead."
Nikita Khrushchev, Pravda, 20 July 1963
"A full scale nuclear exchange, lasting less than 60 minutes...could
wipe out more than 300 million Americans, Europeans, and Russians, as well
as untold numbers elsewhere. And the survivors--as Chairman Khrushchev
warned the Communist Chinese, `the survivors would envy the dead.' For
they would inherit a world so devastated by explosions and poison and fire
that today we cannot conceive of its horrors."
President John F. Kennedy, address to the nation on the Limited
Test Ban Treaty, 26 July 1963
"In an all-out nuclear war, more destructive power than in all of World
War II would be unleashed every second during the long afternoon it would
take for all the missiles and bombs to fall. A World War II every second--more
people killed in the first few hours than all the wars of history put together.
The survivors, if any, would live in despair amid the poisoned ruins of
a civilization that had committed suicide."
President Jimmy Carter, Farewell Address to the American People,
14 January 1981
"From now on it is only through a conscious choice and through a deliberate
policy that humanity can survive."
Pope John Paul II, Address in Hiroshima, 1981
"it is not morally acceptable to intend to kill the innocent as part
of a strategy of deterring nuclear war."
U.S. Catholic Bishops' Pastoral Letter on War and Peace, 1983
"It is simply not acceptable that our future lies in the hands of only
five nuclear weapon states. It belongs to all nations, to all peoples,
to present as well as future generations."
Joint declaration of the members of the Five Continent Peace Initiative,
22 May 1984
"Almost imperceptibly, over the last four decades, every nation and
every human being has lost ultimate control over their own life and death.
For all of us, it is a small group of men and machines in cities far away
who can decide our fate. Every day we remain alive is a day of grace as
if mankind as a whole were a prisoner in the death cell awaiting the uncertain
moment of execution. And like every innocent defendant, we refuse to believe
that the execution will ever take place."
Members of the Five Continent Peace Initiative, Argentina, India,
Mexico, Tanzania, Sweden, and Greece, The "Delhi Declaration" 28 January
1985
"Humankind continues to face the threat of nuclear annihilation. Today's
hesitation leads to tomorrow's destruction. The fates of all of us are
bound together here on earth. There can be no survival for any without
peaceful coexistence for all."
Takeshi Araki, Mayor of Hiroshima, 6 August 1985
"Nuclear weapons are clearly inhumane weapons in obvious violation of
international law. So long as such weapons exist, it is inevitable that
the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be repeated -- somewhere, sometime
-- in an unforgivable affront to humanity itself."
Takashi Hiraoka, Mayor of Hiroshima, Hiroshima Peace Declaration,
6 August 1995
"The human race cannot coexist with nuclear weapons."
Iccho Itoh, Mayor of Nagasaki, Nagasaki Peace Declaration, 9 August
1995
"Everybody's going to make it if there are enough shovels to go around...Dig
a hole, cover it with a couple of doors and then throw three feet of dirt
on top. It's the dirt that does it."
T.K. Jones, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategic and
Theater Nuclear Forces, Research and Engineering, LA Times 16 January 1982
"U.S. defense policies ensure our preparedness to respond to and, if
necessary, successfully fight either a conventional or nuclear war."
FY 1983 Budget of the United States Government
"the supreme guarantee of the security of the [NATO] Allies is provided
by the strategic nuclear forces of the Alliance. ...Alliance nuclear forces
continue to play a unique and essential role in the Alliance's strategy
of war prevention..."
NATO Communique, 29 November 1995
"Anyone who considers using a weapon of mass destruction against the
United States or its allies must first consider the consequences. ...We
would not specify in advance what our response would be, but it would be
both overwhelming and devastating."
Secretary of Defense William Perry, 18 April 1996
"[Nuclear] deterrence doesn't work outside of the Russian-U.S. context;
Saddam Hussein showed that."
General Charles Horner, Commander of U.S. Space Command, 15 July
1994
"There are some people that will be deterred by the fact that we have
nuclear weapons...But those people are the folks we can deal with anyway."
General Charles Horner, Commander of U.S. Space Command, 15 July
1994
"I just don't think nuclear weapons are usable...I'm not saying that
we military disarm. I'm saying that I have a nuclear weapons, and you're
North Korea and you have a nuclear weapon. You can use yours. I can't use
mine. What am I going to use it on? What are nuclear weapons good for?
Busting cities. What president of the United States is going to take out
Pyongyang?"
General Charles Horner, Commander of U.S. Space Command, 15 July
1994
"So then, you say, `Why do I have nuclear weapons?' To use against small
countries creating problems. But then you get into that moral issue...I
just don't think nuclear weapons are usable."
General Charles Horner, Commander of U.S. Space Command, 15 July
1994
"The United States strongly seeks a lasting agreement for the discontinuance
of nuclear weapons tests. We believe that this would be an important step
toward reduction of international tensions and would open the way to further
agreement on substantial measures of disarmament."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Letter to Soviet Premier Khrushchev
13 April 1959
"Controlled, universal disarmament is the imperative of our time. The
demand for it by the hundreds of millions whose chief concern is the long
future of themselves and their children will, I hope, become so universal
and so insistent that no man, no government anywhere, can withstand it."
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Address to the Indian Parliament, New Delhi,
10 December 1959
"Today I can declare my hope and declare it from the bottom of my heart
that we will eventually see the time when that number of nuclear weapons
is down to zero and the world is a much better place."
General Colin Powell, US Army, then chair of U.S. Joint Chiefs of
Staff , 10 June 1993, at Harvard University
"The nuclear weapon is obsolete. I want to get rid of them all."
General Charles Horner, Commander of U.S. Space Command, 15 July
1994
"I want to go to zero, and I'll tell you why: If we and the Russians
can go to zero nuclear weapons, then think what that does for us in our
efforts to counter the new war...Think how intolerant we will be of nations
that are developing nuclear weapons if we have none. Think of the high
moral ground we secure by having none...It's kind of hard for us to say
to North Korea, `You are terrible people, you're developing a nuclear weapons,'
when we have oh, 8,000."
General Charles Horner, Commander of U.S. Space Command, 15 July
1994
"...the nuclear-weapon States reaffirm their commitment...[to]...the
determined pursuit...of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear
weapons globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons..."
Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament,
May 1995
"There can be no real safety against nuclear destruction until the weapons
themselves have been destroyed, their possession foresworn, their production
prohibited, their ingredients made inaccessible to those who might seek
to evade the prohibition. ...This view may appear utopian, but to reject
it is to accept not only the possibility but the inevitability that someday,
somewhere, immense numbers of people will again perish under nuclear mushroom
clouds like those that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki 50 years ago...Wherever,
whenever, however many mushroom clouds it may be, we say such an outcome
is unacceptable and must be prevented. It can only be prevented if nuclear
weapons and, ultimately, war itself are banned from this planet."
Hiroshima Declaration of the Pugwash Council, 23 July 1995
"The atomic bomb survivors...cannot wait another 50 years. Their highest
hope is to see the abolition of nuclear weapons within their own lifetime.
It is a steep climb to this goal, but one from which we must never relent..."
Iccho Itoh, Mayor of Nagasaki, Nagasaki Peace Declaration, 9 August
1995
"The terror-filled anaesthesia which numbed rational thought, made nuclear
war thinkable and grossly excessive arsenals possible during the Cold War
is gradually wearing off. A renewed appreciation for the obscene power
of a single nuclear weapon is taking a new hold on our consciousness, as
we confront the nightmarish prospect of nuclear terror at the micro level."
General Lee Butler, Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, speech
at the State of the World Forum, San Francisco, 3 October 1996
"What, then, does the future hold? How do we proceed? Can a consensus
be forged that nuclear weapons have no defensible role, that the political
and human consequences of their employment transcends any asserted military
utility, that as weapons of mass destruction, the case for their elimination
is a thousand fold stronger and more urgent that for deadly chemicals and
viruses already widely declared illegitimate, subject to destruction and
prohibited from any future production? I believe that such a consensus
in not only possible, it is imperative ad is in fact growing daily."
General Lee Butler, Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, speech
at the State of the World Forum, San Francisco, 3 October 1996
"Where do we begin? What steps can governments take, responsibly, recognizing that policy makers must always balance a host of competing priorities and interests? First and foremost is for the declared nuclear states to accept that the Cold War is in fact over, to break free of the attitudes, habits and practices that perpetuate enormous inventories, forces standing alert and targeting plans encompassing thousands of aimpoints. Second, for the undeclared states to embrace the harsh lessons of the Cold War: that nuclear weapons are inherently dangerous, hugely expensive, militarily inefficient and morally indefensible; that implacable hostility and alienation will almost certainly over time lead to a nuclear crisis; that the strength of deterrence is inversely proportional to the stress of confrontation; and that nuclear war is a raging, insatiable beast whose instincts and appetites we pretend to understand but cannot possibly control." General Lee Butler, Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, speech at the State of the World Forum, San Francisco, 3 October 1996
"I want to record my strong conviction that the risks entailed by nuclear weapons are far too great to leave the prospects of their elimination solely within the province with governments." General Lee Butler, Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, speech at the State of the World Forum, San Francisco, 3 October 1996
"We are not condemned to repeat the lessons of forty years at the nuclear brink. We can do better than condone a world in which nuclear weapons are enshrined as the ultimate arbiter of conflict. The price already paid is too dear, the risks run too great. The nuclear beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste. The task is daunting but we cannot shrink from it. The opportunity may not come again." General Lee Butler, Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, speech at the State of the World Forum, San Francisco, 3 October 1996
For more Information on selected Nuclear Quotations, please contact Lt Colonel Piers M. Wood U.S.A.R. (Ret.)
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