Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
Joyful Nuclear War quotations
We live in a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants, in a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about dying than we know about living.
The survivors (of a nuclear war) would envy the dead.
Only in America can you be Pro-Death Penalty, Pro-War, Pro-Unmanned Drone Bombs, Pro-Nuclear Weapons, Pro-Guns, Pro-Torture, Pro-Land Mines, AND still call yourself 'Pro-Life.'
But scientists on both sides of the iron curtain played a very significant role in maintaining the momentum of the nuclear arms race throughout the four decades of the Cold War.
To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle and lose the war.
It is madness for any country to build its policy with an eye to nuclear war.
The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.
The inspections started in 1991, right after the Gulf War.
One of the conditions for the ceasefire was that Iraq had to do away with all of its weapons of mass destruction - biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product.
I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this.
Extending social and economic development throughout the world and eliminating nuclear weapons from military arsenals are two fundamental prerequisites to replacing the culture of war with a culture of peace, and building true security for all the world's people.
Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable .. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.
How well a posse policy will fare in a world with 3 billion people below the poverty line and nuclear warheads scattered around a dozen or more regions like melons in a field, is not easy to imagine.
Washington's adventuristic policy, whipping up international tension to the utmost, is pushing mankind towards nuclear catastrophe.
The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas.
The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians, but it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets.
We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of a worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth - but neither shall we shrink from that risk any time it must be faced.
I shall add that only he who has decided to commit suicide can start a nuclear war in the hope of emerging a victor from it. No matter what the attacker might possess, no matter what method of unleashing nuclear war he chooses, he will not attain his aims. Retribution will inevitably ensue.
I don't think that the contradictions between capitalism and socialism can be resolved by war. This is no longer the age of the bow and arrow. It's the nuclear age, and war can annihilate us all. The only way to achieve solutions seems to be for the different social systems to coexist.
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts. And the way to make sure it never starts is to abolish the dangerous costly nuclear stockpiles which imprison mankind.
Short of nuclear war itself, population growth is the gravest issue the world faces. If we do not act, the problem will be solved by famine, riots, insurrection and war.
The massive quantities of radiation that would be released in a war fought with nuclear weapons might, over time, cause such great changes in the human gene pool that following generations might not be recognizable as human beings.
World War III will be triggered off not by suppressed nationalists seeking political independence, as happened the first time around when the Serbs at Sarajevo shot the heir to the Austrian throne, but by some semiliterate, whacked-out "loner" who lobs a rocket into a nuclear arsenal in order to impress Brooke Shields.
From a scientific perspective there is some indication that a nuclear war could deplete the earth's ozone layer or, less likely, could bring on a new Ice Age - but there is no suggestion that either the created order or mankind would be destroyed in the process.
We do not believe that a nuclear war should be fought, and we do not believe that a nuclear war can be won.
The widespread diffusion of nuclear weapons would make many nations able, and in some cases also create the pressure, to aggravate an on-going crisis, or even touch off a war between two other powers for purposes of their own.
Sometimes people ask me why I began perestroika.
Were the causes basically domestic or foreign? The domestic reasons were undoubtedly the main ones, but the danger of nuclear war was so serious that it was a no less significant factor.
The world has achieved brilliance without conscience.
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
My feelings of revulsion and foreboding about nuclear weapons had not changed an iota since 1945, and they have never left me. Since I was 14, the overriding objective of my life has been to prevent the occurrence of nuclear war.
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.
Believe me, after the destruction of Chinese nuclear sites by our missiles, there won't be much time for the Americans to choose between the defense of their Chinese allies and peaceful co-existence with us.
The nuclear arms race has no military purpose.
Wars cannot be fought with nuclear weapons. Their existence only adds to our perils.
When I was in the White House, I was confronted with the challenge of the Cold War. Both the Soviet Union and I had 30,000 nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire earth and I had to maintain the peace.
The last few centuries have seen the world freed from several scourges-slavery, for example; death by torture for heretics; and, most recently, smallpox. I am optimistic enough to believe that the next scourge to disappear will be large-scale warfare-killed by the existence and nonuse of nuclear weapons.
Mankind needs peace more than ever, for our entire planet, threatened by nuclear war, is in danger of total destruction. A destruction only man can provoke, only man can prevent.