Nuclear Quotes

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[The Joint Intelligence Committee] concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population, and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability.

The world does not have to prove to Iran that Iran is building a nuclear bomb. Iran has to convince the world that it is not striving towards such a bomb.

One does not have to be a nuclear scientist to understand what fair is. Fair is, if you got a pie, you say we're going to divide it, and if you take a great big piece and leave me a little-bitty piece —that ain't fair. Fair is when you cut it down the middle.

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.

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

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.

If some nuclear properties of the heavy elements had been a little different from what they turned out to be, it might have been impossible to build a bomb.

The decision to use the atom bomb on Japanese cities, and the consequent buildup of enormous nuclear arsenals, was made by governments, on the basis of political and military perceptions.

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.

The genetic code [is] written in the four-letter alphabet, "A", "G", "C", "T." Here, then, floating in the nuclear sap, is the code which governs the skill of creating a six-foot drum major with a slight squint and dimpled cheeks out of an egg with a diameter of a few microns.

Arthur Koestler

Just as a human soul that faces great difficulties also faces great opportunities for spiritual growth, so a human society that faces destruction also faces the opportunity to enter a period of renaissance. I think that, barring an accident, the wish to survive will keep us from a nuclear war.

Nuclear weapons can be dismantled, but they cannot be uninvented.

I have never met anyone who built a bomb shelter and felt protected by it. I have never met a modern military man who did not realize that military victory is a concept which became obsolete with the coming of the nuclear age, and most civilians realize this also. Wisdom demands that we stop preparing to wage a war which would eliminate mankind - and start preparing to eliminate the seeds of war.

The North Korean regime remains one of the world's leading proliferator of missile technology, including transfers to Iran and Syria. The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable of the consequences of such action.

Thus was born the vast modern subject of nuclear physics, which now gives such fertile research problems to so many of the world's physicists and, incidentally, such headaches to so many of the world's statesmen.

Patrick Blackett

While all previous Iranian presidents have tried to reform Iran's economy, none had the capacity to extract resources from the population, and favourable circumstances needed to enact and sustain economic reforms. Rouhani may have all these. He has already established credibility by fulfilling his most important campaign promise to have sanctions lifted without abandoning the nuclear programme, and he can use this political capital to lead Iran out of its deep-rooted economic woes.

Despite official drivel about clean bombs and tactical nuclear weapons, anyone who can read a newspaper or listen to a radio knows that some of us mortals have the power to destroy the human race and man's home on earth. We need not even make war; only by preparing, by playing with our new weapons, we poison the air, the water, the soil of our plants, damage the health of the living, and weaken the chances of the newborn.

Martha Gellhorn

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.

The only good thing about nuclear war is that it is the single most egalitarian idea that man has ever had. On the day of reckoning, you will not be asked to present your credentials. The devastation will be indiscriminate.

[Science is not popular] is... the fault of the educational system. We do not teach how to think. This is a very serious failure that may even, in a world rigged with 60,000 nuclear weapons, compromise the human future.

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.

The release of nuclear energy is an event comparable to the first fire kindled by prehistoric man — though there is no modern Prometheus but teams of clever yet less heroic fellows, useless as inspiration for epic poetry.

My dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth.

Downwinders, meaning those people, individuals, communities that were downwind of the nuclear test site. During those years when we were testing atomic bombs above ground, when we watched them for entertainment from the roofs of our high schools, little did we know what was raining down on us, little did we know what would appear years later.

Terry Tempest Williams

The nuclear capability of Israel has resulted from this conspiracy, which provided for the highjacking of 200 tons of ore in 1968. The rumor was widespread in the knowledgeable circles of Salt Lake City that the Mormon Church had arranged to assist Israel in bringing off Armageddon.