Top 100 Quotes About Nuclear Weapons
#1. So I ask the nuclear powers to abandon the out-of-date thinking of the Cold War period and take a fresh look. Above all, I appeal to them to bear in mind the long-term threat that nuclear weapons pose to humankind and to begin action towards their elimination.
Joseph Rotblat
#2. When we put an end to nuclear tests, we get closer to eliminating all nuclear weapons.
Ban Ki-moon
#3. Israel claims it needs nuclear weapons as a deterrent against any threat to its existence. The Arab world in return feels that this is an imbalanced system; there is a sense of humiliation and impotence.
Mohamed ElBaradei
#4. Clearly North Korea is a very strange situation because it is such an isolated country run by a handful of dictators, or maybe just one, who seems to be somewhat paranoid. And, who had nuclear weapons.
Bernie Sanders
#5. Long before the terrifying potential of the arms race was recognized, there was a widespread instinctive abhorrence of nuclear weapons, and a strong desire to get rid of them.
Joseph Rotblat
#6. This is Communism's view of war. War is necessary. War is an instrument for achieving a goal.
But unfortunately for Communism, this policy ran up against the American atomic bomb in 1945. Then the Communists changed their tactics and suddenly became advocates of peace at any cost.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#7. It's really only nuclear weapons that deserve the WMD acronym.
Steven Pinker
#8. 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.
Helen Caldicott
#9. There is no direct evidence that nuclear weapons prevented a world war. Conversely, it is known that they nearly caused one.
Joseph Rotblat
#11. The power to destroy the world by the use of nuclear weapons is a power that cannot be used-we cannot accept the idea of such monstrous immmorality.
Linus Pauling
#12. Since the advent of nuclear weapons, it seems clear that there is no longer any alternative to peace, if there is to be a happy and well world.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#13. American nuclear weapons would almost certainly start being removed from Britain within 12 months of a Labour government gaining power.
Neil Kinnock
#15. In light of 50 years of bondage of Eastern Europe, [invading the Soviet Union in 1948 to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons] was probably a reasonable thing to do.
Condoleezza Rice
#16. Saddam Hussein has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do.
Henry Waxman
#17. The reduction of nuclear arsenals and the removal of the threat of worldwide nuclear destruction is a measure, in my judgment, ofthe power and strength of a great nation.
Jimmy Carter
#18. My guess is that nuclear weapons will be used sometime in the next hundred years, but that their use is much more likely to be small and limited than widespread and unconstrained.
Herman Kahn
#19. It is ludicrous to believe that he meant nuclear weapons can be used. It is truly fearful to see how the mainstream media in the west can construct an adversary and that there are so few dissenting voices.
Mohammad Marandi
#20. As for the assertion that nuclear weapons prevent wars, how many more wars are needed to refute this arguments? Tens of millions have died in the many wars that have taken place since 1945.
Joseph Rotblat
#21. We have an active program. We have nuclear weapons, we are a nuclear power. We have an advanced missiles program.
Ayub Khan
#22. The notion that we would condition Iran not getting nuclear weapons in a verifiable deal on Iran recognizing Israel is really akin to saying that we won't sign a deal unless the nature of the Iranian regime completely transforms. And that is, I think, a fundamental misjudgment.
Barack Obama
#23. Reducing the nuclear danger will require a universal, consistent opposition to all forms of weapons development
David Cortright
#24. All nuclear material in weapons programmes must be subject one day to binding international verification.
Ban Ki-moon
#25. It is not viable for one country to demand a right to increase and upgrade its nuclear weapons capabilities while asking others to eliminate theirs.
John Bruton
#26. It is the earnest hope of our people that the world may see the day when all nuclear weapons are abolished.
Eisaku Sato
#27. The job of the united nations is to grow more flowers on the earth.
Amit Ray
#28. Nuclear weapons continue to occupy a unique place in global security affairs. No other weapons, in my opinion, anyway, match their potential for prompt and long-term damage and their strategic impact.
C. Robert Kehler
#29. You've got the North Koreans building weapons; you got the Iranians building weapons. You've got - the Pakistanis already have at least 100 nuclear weapons. Do you think there's any serious effort in this country to come to grips with that?
Newt Gingrich
#30. Generation after generation can't just be loaded with more and more nuclear weapons and not ultimately dance to that music.
Marianne Williamson
#31. Harry Truman, after all, in conjunction with Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, radically cut back American arms following the end of the Second World War. Johnson himself wished to dismantle the Marine Corps and felt nuclear weapons had made all such conventional arms unnecessary.
Victor Davis Hanson
#32. 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
#33. To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, is more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.
Marilyn French
#34. We continue to have nuclear weapons relied on as a weapon of choice. If that policy were to continue, we continue to have countries who are in a security bind, if you like, or perceive themselves to be in security bind to look for acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Mohamed ElBaradei
#35. Don't let that weapon technology proliferate. Don't let Saddam Hussein get capability for nuclear or chemical weapons, because he's already shown a willingness to use any weapon at his disposal.
John Sununu
#36. We still live in a world where if you have nuclear weapons, you are buying power; you are buying insurance against attack.
Mohamed ElBaradei
#37. If we had adhered to the concept of connectedness, then we would not have created nuclear weapons, huge armies and global warming.
Satish Kumar
#38. Having worked for him in the nuclear weapons policy business, I can tell you that President Reagan was committed to assuring the effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent.
Frank Gaffney
#39. It is time for the rest of the world to join ... in demanding that ALL the nuclear weapons states -including Israel, India and Pakistan, but above all the US and Russia - negotiate concrete steps on a definite time-table toward the global, inspected abolition of nuclear weapons.
Daniel Ellsberg
#40. Io, this is Admiral Muhan of the Martian Congressional Republic Navy. You fire anything bigger than a bottle rocket and we will glass the whole fucking moon. Do you read me?
James S.A. Corey
#41. It is a measure of the arrogance of nations - but especially of the nuclear-weapon states - to assert that a nuclear-weapons-free world is impossible when, in fact, ninety-five percent of the nations of the world already are nuclear free.
George Lee Butler
#42. We do not wish to have nuclear weapons on New Zealand soil or in our harbors. We do not ask, we do not expect, the United States to come to New Zealand's assistance with nuclear weapons or to present American nuclear capability as a deterrent to an attacker.
David Lange
#43. I have to bring to your notice a terrifying reality: with the development of nuclear weapons Man has acquired, for the first time in history, the technical means to destroy the whole of civilization in a single act.
Joseph Rotblat
#44. If we are really anxious not to have nuclear weapons in Iran, the first thing is to call an international conference on abolishing all nuclear weapons, including Israeli nuclear weapons.
Bruce Kent
#45. My dad was a Navy munitions officer, and by the end of his career, he was a specialist in nuclear weapons.
James Mercer
#46. The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly Saddam can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
Condoleezza Rice
#47. We need to make it very clear to the Iranians, the same way we made it clear to the Soviet Union and China, that their first use of nuclear weapons would result in the devastation of their nation.
John Abizaid
#48. By 2020, Pakistan could have a fissile material stockpile sufficient to produce more than 200 nuclear weapons.
Anonymous
#49. 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.
George W. Bush
#50. North Korea. Not only does North Korean have nuclear weapons, but their leadership appears to not be rational.
Ted Lieu
#51. Is it not true that each superpower has enough nuclear weapons to kill all members of mankind several times over? Yes. And the same is true of kitchen knives.
Petr Beckmann
#52. I visited the Chinese side last year. The Chinese are in a constant state of military readiness. They have all their nuclear weapons in the area, presumably trained on targets across the border.
Harrison Salisbury
#53. Iran won't pursue nuclear weapons because 'it's contrary to their faith.'
Barack Obama
#54. We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars maintaining 5,000 nuclear weapons. I think we need major reform in the military, making it more cost effective, but also focusing on the real crisis that faces America.
Bernie Sanders
#55. Everyone knows that Israel has nuclear weapons, but no one is talking about it. The world doesn't want nuclear weapons - not in Israel, not in the Middle East and not anywhere in the world.
Mordechai Vanunu
#56. Nuclear weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace.
John F. Kennedy
#57. Nuclear Weapons aren't much of a threat, today; compared to Families of the world, going Nuclear.
Aniruddha Sastikar
#58. The mountain trembled like an earthquake. Dust flew into the sky. And the rock turned dark red, like the color of blood'.
'How would you know?' Asks Sindhi cap. 'You only have a black and white television'.
'But it's a very good one. You can almost see colours.
Mohsin Hamid
#60. Nuclear proliferation is on the rise. Equipment, material and training were once largely inaccessible. Today, however, there is a sophisticated worldwide network that can deliver systems for producing material usable in weapons.
Mohamed ElBaradei
#61. Thee are such horrible weapons. And so no sane leader would ever want to cross that line to using nuclear weapons. And, if you are not going to cross that line, then these things are basically useless.
Colin Powell
#62. Russia is opposed to the proliferation of mass destruction weapons, including nuclear weapons, and in this context we call upon our Iranian friends to abandon the uranium enrichment programme.
Vladimir Putin
#63. The world should contemplate a nuclear weapons-armed Iran with the greatest of concern.
Daniel Fried
#64. Einstein also knew the dangers of taking this step. That he understood the physics of nuclear weapons was beyond question, but he could claim no equivalent understanding of international affairs. As he later famously remarked, "politics is more difficult than physics."1
Michael Keren
#65. I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, which is my hometown. In Los Alamos is, for people who don't know, a nuclear lab that built the atomic bomb. The only reason the town exists is to make nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, and that's still happening there.
Drew Goddard
#66. Japan learned from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the tragedy wrought by nuclear weapons must never be repeated and that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.
Daisaku Ikeda
#67. Nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself.
Philip Berrigan
#68. Of course I've got lawyers. They are like nuclear weapons, I've got em 'cause everyone else has. But as soon as you use them they screw everything up.
Danny DeVito
#69. As long as some of us choose to rely on nuclear weapons, we continue to risk that these same weapons will become increasingly attractive to others.
Mohamed ElBaradei
#70. Countries are making nuclear weapons like there is no tomorrow.
Emo Philips
#71. The nuclear weapons on board just one of our Trident submarines contain eight times the firepower expended in all of World War II.
John Allen Paulos
#72. I think we've already voted at the U.N., in the Security Council, to get rid of nuclear weapons. Let's get rid of them. Let's get rid of ours and then Iran will stop, I believe. And so everybody else will, because if everybody doesn't have them, then we're safe, at least safe from a nuclear attack.
Ted Turner
#73. Indeed, the whole human species is endangered, by nuclear weapons or by other means of wholesale destruction which further advances in science are likely to produce.
Joseph Rotblat
#74. The foreign policy aim of ants can be summed up as follows: restless aggression, territorial conquest, and genocidal annihilation of neighboring colonies whenever possible. If ants had nuclear weapons, they would probably end the world in a week.
Bert Holldobler
#75. No country can hope to beat the Yanks off with conventional weapons - they've got air, sea and land completely covered. The only recourse is chemical, biological and nuclear weapons (the Yanks used them in Vietnam, and have not ruled out using them in this war).
Margo Kingston
#76. Are we prepared to tolerate a world in which countries which care about morality lay down their nuclear weapons, leaving others to threaten the rest of the world or hold it to ransom?
Des Browne
#77. The International Declaration of Human Rights says the right to housing, health, education should be guaranteed to everyone. The moment these things are provided, we will have a different world order and nuclear weapons will become less of a threat.
Bernard Lown
#78. My short-term vision is the abolition of nuclear weapons. My long-term vision is the abolition of war.
Joseph Rotblat
#79. All nuclear weapon states should now recognize that this is so, and declare - in Treaty form - that they will never be the first to use nuclear weapons. This would open the way to the gradual, mutual reduction of nuclear arsenals, down to zero.
Joseph Rotblat
#80. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle and lose the war,
Benjamin Netanyahu
#81. We must work toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons, and an end to policies which cause this country to move toward the weaponization of space.
Dennis Kucinich
#82. Putin has a lot at stake here and restoring the relationship with the United States, and there are already signs as Sandy mentioned that he's moving in the right direction to begin to ascertain that their trade with Iran is not used for the production of nuclear weapons.
Frank Carlucci
#83. Nuclear weapons will not be gotten rid of until the United States confronts the magnitude of the horror, the tragedy, and the long-term suffering of the victims
Bernard Lown
#84. Misconceptions are like cockroaches: you have no idea where they came from, but they're everywhere - often where you don't expect them - and they're impervious to nuclear weapons.
Alex Reinhart
#85. President Obama has made it clear that the United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
John O. Brennan
#86. [Saddam] Hussein maintains an active and aggressive nuclear weapons program.
Sandy Berger
#87. The implied threat of using nuclear weapons to curb guerrillas was as absurd as to talk of using a sledge hammer to ward off a swarm of mosquitoes.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#88. Look, Israel doesn't intend to introduce nuclear weapons, but if people are afraid that we have them, why not? It's a deterrent.
Shimon Peres
#89. I can tell you one thing, Iran is closer to developing nuclear weapons today than it was a week ago, or a month ago or a year ago. It's just moving on with its efforts.
Benjamin Netanyahu
#90. There is little doubt that Iran is on a mission to rebuild its nuclear weapons and use that capability to wreak havoc and destruction on Israel and others throughout the world.
Russ Carnahan
#91. We may yet work up to some serious shooting war, or maybe some acts of urban genocide committed with rogue nuclear weapons. But if that were the case, why would we call that '9/11'? If Washington disappeared in a mushroom cloud, we'd give that huge event a different name.
Bruce Sterling
#92. We are not afraid of nuclear weapons. The point is that if we had in fact wanted to build a nuclear bomb, we are brave enough to say that we want it. But we never do that.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
#93. he was whisked away from the lines of passengers and led along corridors with the politeness you might observe when dealing with a politician belonging to a country that had nuclear weapons and a carefree approach to their deployment.
Terry Pratchett
#94. Our enemy is Al Qaeda and its allies, people who have publicly said they wish to attack the United States again, people who have publicly called on nuclear physicists and engineers to help them gain access to nuclear weapons, which, as the whole world knows, Pakistan has.
Richard Holbrooke
#95. Lawyers are like nuclear weapons. By all rights they shouldn't exist, but if some people have them, then you'd better have one, too, just in case.
John Gierach
#96. We must unite to make nuclear weapons a horror of the past.
Michael Douglas
#97. 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.
Jimmy Carter
#98. We have a chance to wind down and expedite the removal of 96 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. What an achievement it would be, if at the end of the next administration, we could say that the nuclear arsenals of both Russia and the United States had been reduced to the barest minimums.
Dianne Feinstein
#99. Nuclear weapons are infinitely less important in our foreign policy than they were in the days of the Cold War. I don't think we need nuclear weapons any longer.
Des Browne
#100. 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. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.
Omar Nelson Bradley
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