Top 100 Quotes About Disarmament
#1. 2nd step towards achieving peace is to support disarmament policies because arms fuel tensions and undermine peace and stability.
Widad Akreyi
#2. Disarmament should be conducive to the enhancement of every country's general security instead of becoming the instrument and means for a few countries to strengthen their military superiority by weakening or restricting other countries.
Sha Zukang
#3. The world wants disarmament, the world needs disarmament. We have it in our power to help fashion future history.
Arthur Henderson
#4. The relationship of the two problems is rather the reverse. To a great extent disarmament is dependent on guarantees of peace. Security comes first and disarmament second.
Ludwig Quidde
#5. The burden for achieving disarmament cannot be borne by peace groups alone. Everybody, regardless of age, income, profession, gender or nationality, has a stake in this quest.
Ban Ki-moon
#6. Secondly, the Government of Sudan should commit to the disarmament and control of the Janjaweed militia and ensure that the targeting of civilians ceases immediately.
Jan Egeland
#7. Well, this is an unfortunate part of the UN institution. It's the - the theater of the absurd. It doesn't only cast Israel as the villain; it often casts real villains in leading roles: Gadhafi's Libya chaired the UN Commission on Human Rights; Saddam's Iraq headed the UN Committee on Disarmament.
Benjamin Netanyahu
#8. The world organization debates disarmament in one room and, in the next room, moves the knights and pawns that make national arms imperative.
E.B. White
#9. It has become impossible to give up the enterprise of disarmament without abandoning the whole great adventure of building up a collective peace system.
Arthur Henderson
#10. Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are not utopian ideals. They are critical to global peace and security.
Ban Ki-moon
#11. When distrust exists between governments, when there is a danger of war, they will not be willing to disarm even when logic indicates that disarmament would not affect military security at all.
Ludwig Quidde
#12. Peace is neither the absence of war nor the presence of a disarmament agreement. Peace is a change of heart.
Richard Lamm
#13. The Cold War's end pushed disarmament down most leaders' agendas. It's a sophisticated issue, which I think is one reason why it is not so hands-on to many people. It's not visceral. It's not like a starving child.
Michael Douglas
#14. Even a total and universal disarmament does not guarantee the maintenance of peace.
Ludwig Quidde
#15. Unilateral disarmament by Britain is opposed to our country's best interests, could begin the unravelling of NATO and therefore jeopardise the stability of Europe.
James Callaghan
#16. Nuclear disarmament is one of the greatest legacies we can pass on to future generations.
Ban Ki-moon
#17. Finally, a safer world presupposes the revival of the virtuous circle of non-proliferation of weapons and disarmament.
Jacques Chirac
#18. The popular, and one may say naive, idea is that peace can be secured by disarmament and that disarmament must therefore precede the attainment of absolute security and lasting peace.
Ludwig Quidde
#19. We shall never be able to effect physical disarmament until we have succeeded in effecting moral disarmament.
Ramsay MacDonald
#20. For some twenty years the window that opened at the end of the Cold War has been allowed to hang flapping in the wind. It is high time that the five nuclear-weapon states take seriously their commitment to negotiate toward nuclear disarmament.
Hans Blix
#21. Defeatism about the feasibility of plans for disarmament and ordered peace has been the most calamitious of all the errors made by democratic governments in modern times.
Philip Noel-Baker, Baron Noel-Baker
#22. If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament - disarmament follows peace.
Bernard Baruch
#23. So long as peace is not attained by law (so argue the advocates of armaments) the military protection of a country must not be undermined, and until such is the case disarmament is impossible.
Ludwig Quidde
#24. I urge Governments to considerably reduce funds allocated to the military, not only as a disarmament issue, but also as a potential contributor to social and environmental protection and call for the holding of referenda on this issue worldwide.
Alfred-Maurice De Zayas
#25. Nowhere have women been more excluded from decision-making than in the military and foreign affairs. When it comes to the military and questions of nuclear disarmament, the gender gap becomes the gender gulf.
Eleanor Smeal
#26. I think the disarmament of Iraq is inevitable.
Douglas Feith
#27. We should put away the militaristic outlook. The U.S. should start talking about disarmament, nuclear disarmament, of the region.
Akbar Ganji
#28. Well, the disarmament conference is off to a flying start. There is nothing to prevent their succeeding now but human nature.
Will Rogers
#29. I abhor Saddam's regime, but the basis has to be disarmament.
Tony Blair
#30. Disarmament by war and democracy by occupation are difficult prospects.
Hans Blix
#31. All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament.
William L. Shirer
#32. Armaments do not, generally speaking, cause wars. This notion, the logical crux of all arguments in favor of disarmament, turns the causal relationship upside down. Actually, it is wars, or conflicts threatening war, that cause armaments, not the reverse.
James Burnham
#33. The ancient Jewish people gave the world the vision of eternal peace, of universal disarmament, of abolishing the teaching and learning of war.
Menachem Begin
#34. Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#35. We have to consciously build the elements of a world based on a culture of peace and disarmament. This is a task for everyone. It is multidimensional in scope, requiring meaningful participation of people at all levels.
Widad Akreyi
#36. Victim disarmament types are sick, sick people, who'd rather see a woman raped in an alley and strangled with her own pantyhose than see her with a gun in her hand.
L. Neil Smith
#37. A world war - God forbid! - will leave only smoldering ashes as a mute testimony of a human race whose folly led inexorably to untimely death. Yet there are those who sincerely feel that disarmament is an evil and international negotiation is an abominable waste of time.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#38. There can be no true disarmament without peace, and there can be no real peace without very material disarmament.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#39. And, by the way, how come all the people who were so in favor of unilateral nuclear disarmament are so opposed to unilateral protection against nukes?
P. J. O'Rourke
#40. An act of unilateral nuclear disarmament by a European power would have a much more lasting impact than all the sanctions under consideration. Sanctions, as we know from the example of Iraq, always affect the least powerful citizens the most.
Tariq Ali
#41. In terms of weapons, the best disarmament tool so far is nuclear energy. We have been taking down the Russian warheads, turning it into electricity. 10 percent of American electricity comes from decommissioned warheads.
Stewart Brand
#42. Disarmament or limitation of armaments, which depends on the progress made on security, also contributes to the maintenance of peace.
Ludwig Quidde
#43. Moral disarmament is to safeguard the future; material disarmament is to save for the present, that there may be a future to safeguard.
Elihu Root
#44. The maximalist demand of a complete ban on weapons, and the 'incremental steps' towards disarmament are both jammed. Will advancing IHL help both of these processes?
Jonathan Granoff
#45. Nuclear disarmament is the only sane path to a safer world.
Ban Ki-moon
#46. King consistently argued that rich Western nations had moral and political responsibilities to redress global poverty, something they would never do without world disarmament.
Thomas F. Jackson
#47. Let me remind you that nuclear disarmament is not just an ardent desire of the people, as expressed in many resolutions of the United Nations. It is a legal commitment by the five official nuclear states, entered into when they signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Joseph Rotblat
#48. Among pacifists it was above all the English who always insisted on the importance of disarmament. They said that the man in the street would not understand the kind of pacifism that neglected to demand immediate restriction of armaments.
Ludwig Quidde
#49. The catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons require that it be treated as a top priority. Disarmament will work better than any alternative in reducing the risk of use.
Ban Ki-moon
#50. The leaders of the world face no greater task than that of avoiding nuclear war. While preserving the cause of freedom, we must seek abolition of war through programs of general and complete disarmament. The Test-Ban Treaty of 1963 represents a significant beginning in this immense undertaking.
Robert Kennedy
#51. They're talking about partial nuclear disarmament, which is also like talking about partial circumcision - you either go all the way or forget it.
Robin Williams
#52. History, well taught, is the demythologising of the past ... Take any important issue of our time - Northern Ireland, Nuclear Disarmament, Race, The Welfare State, South Africa - and it becomes impossible to seriously confront any of them without understanding their historical background.
Alan Bullock
#53. Every politician in the world is all for revolution, reason, and disarmament-but only in enemy countries, not in his own.
Hermann Hesse
#54. For a lot of the players it was their first exposure to the Southern female - the most flagrant cheater in the mutual disarmament pact known as feminism. Lipstick! Hairdos! Submissiveness!
Michael Lewis
#55. Disarmament without checks is but a shadow - and a community without law is but a shell.
John F. Kennedy
#56. There wasn't any Republicans in Washington's day. No Republicans, no Boll Weevil, no income tax, no cover charge, no disarmament conference, no luncheon clubs, no stop lights, no static, no head winds. My Lord, living in those days, who wouldn't be great?
Will Rogers
#57. I want to move to a world of no nuclear weapons but I want to do that through multilateral disarmament so that we all disarm together.
Ed Miliband
#58. Let those who have never seen the inhumanity of man to man not think that soft words and examples in disarmament will do anything to prevent domination by the strong.
Arthur Charles
#59. As for total disarmament, there are almost 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world today; even if they were banned, not all would be destroyed.
Herman Kahn
#60. As a first step there must be an offer to achieve equality of rights in disarmament by abolishing the weapons forbidden to the Central Powers by the Peace Treaties.
Arthur Henderson
#61. Barack Obama has injected fresh momentum into efforts - stalled for a decade - to bring about nuclear disarmament.
Mohamed ElBaradei
#62. The pens which write against disarmament are made with the same steel from which guns are made.
Aristide Briand
#64. I appeal to the responsibility of the blocs and the major powers, not to seek security in the arms race, but rather in a meeting for joint disarmament and arms limitations.
Gustav Heinemann
#65. After the Cold War ended, there was an agreement between the former Soviet Union and America to convert weapons-grade nuclear materials into reactor-grade materials. So disarmament and nuclear energy actually are strongly linked.
Susan Eisenhower
#66. The defection of Hussein Kamel was a turning point in the U.N.-imposed disarmament of Iraq in the 1990s.
Barton Gellman
#67. Not to our surprise, we discover that gun crime in Britain is up 10.9 percent since the disarmament of the private citizen.
Jeff Cooper
#68. More must be done in concrete terms in order to promote the cause of disarmament.
Alva Myrdal
#69. Time and time again we have experienced efforts directed toward this popular and simple concept of securing peace by means of disarmament.
Ludwig Quidde
#70. I am for socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself ... I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.
Roger Nash Baldwin
#71. Inner disarmament, external disarmament; these must go together, you see. Peace is not just mere absence of violence - genuine peace must start in each individual heart.
Dalai Lama
#72. We really are at the crossroads and [disarmament] will happen if people of goodwill all over the world raise their voices and take action to let the governments of the world know that's what they want.
Jody Williams
#73. 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.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#74. Iraq did not spontaneously opt for disarmament. They did it as part of a ceasefire, so they were forced to do it, otherwise the war might have gone on. So the motivation has been very different.
Hans Blix
#75. Mick Jagger and I just really liked each other a lot. We talked all night. We had the same views on nuclear disarmament.
Jerry Hall
#76. This is why therapists go to such lengths to urge their anxious patients away from intellectualization: The first step toward peace is disarmament.
Daniel Smith
#77. The notion that disarmament can put a stop to war is contradicted by the nearest dogfight.
George Bernard Shaw
#78. What my enemies call a general peace is my destruction. What I call peace is merely the disarmament of my enemies. Am I not more moderate than they?
Napoleon Bonaparte
#79. The Disarmament Conference has become the focal point of a great struggle between anarchy and world order ... between those who think in terms of inevitable armed conflict and those who seek to build a universal and durable peace.
Arthur Henderson
#80. True security is based on people's welfare - on a thriving economy, on strong public health and education programmes, and on fundamental respect for our common humanity. Development, peace, disarmament, reconciliation and justice are not separate from security; they help to underpin it.
Ban Ki-moon
#81. On December 9, 1994, Yeltsin issued a statement ordering the Federal army to execute the disarmament of all illegal armed units in Chechnya, or as they were known locally, the government.
Anthony Marra
#82. Some pacifists have carried the sound idea of the prime importance of security too far, to the point of declaring that any consideration of disarmament is superfluous and pointless as long as eternal peace has not been attained.
Ludwig Quidde
#83. I've also gotten to play in front of a million people in Central Park when there was a grass roots movement calling for nuclear disarmament - it was about 1982 - they called it Peace Sunday.
Jackson Browne
#84. I agree with the many who consider freezing all sorts of weapons systems a first step in a realistic disarmament policy.
Alva Myrdal
#85. Inspectors do not have the duty or the ability to uncover terrible weapons hidden in a vast country. The responsibility of inspectors is simply to confirm evidence of voluntary and total disarmament. Saddam Hussein has the responsibility to provide that evidence, as directed, and in full
Donald Rumsfeld
#86. We concluded that tomorrow is a moment of truth for the world. Many nations have voiced a commitment to peace and security, and now they must demonstrate that commitment to peace and security in the only effective way: by supporting the immediate and unconditional disarmament of Saddam Hussein.
George W. Bush
#87. We are at the point in time and terror where nothing short of a strong uniform policy of domestic disarmament will alleviate the danger which is crystal clear and perilously present. Let us take the guns away from the people.
Patrick V. Murphy
#88. The views of the European Union are fully reflected in this text, particularly the key objective of the EU, namely vigorously to address the disarmament of Iraq and to do so within the framework of the UN Security Council.
Javier Solana
#89. The city of Hiroshima stands as more than a monument to massive death and destruction. It stands as a living testament to the necessity for progress toward nuclear disarmament.
Edward Kennedy
#90. A free India will throw all her weight in favour of world disarmament and should herself be prepared to give a lead in this.
Mahatma Gandhi
#91. In the spirit of commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, we will strive to achieve real progress in disarmament and arms control.
Sergei Lavrov
#92. To adopt nuclear disarmament would be akin to behaving like a virgin in a brothel.
David Penhaligon
#93. The smaller nations can in fact exercise greater influence on disarmament negotiations than they have hitherto done.
Alva Myrdal
#94. Conflict is not inevitable, but disarmament is ... everyone now accepts that if there is a default by Saddam the international community must act to enforce its will.
Tony Blair
#95. Perhaps the grimmest aspect of this great paradox is that the very nations that are chiefly responsible for starting and for maintaining the Disarmament Conference are also the nations that have begun a new arms race.
Arthur Henderson
#96. 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
#97. Unilateral tolerance in a world of intolerance is like unilateral disarmament in a world of armed camps: it regards hope as a better basis for policy than reality.
Anthony Daniels
#98. In the age when the atom has been split, the moon encircled, diseases conquered, is disarmament so difficult a matter that it must remain a distant dream?
Philip Noel-Baker, Baron Noel-Baker
#99. Reducing the nuclear danger will require a universal, consistent opposition to all forms of weapons development
David Cortright
#100. Line of control should be a garden, a place of art and cultural festival.
Amit Ray
