Atomic Bomb Quotes - Page 3

• In this first testing ground of the atomic bomb I have seen the most terrible and frightening desolation in four years of war. It makes a blitzed Pacific island seem like an Eden. The damage is far greater than photographs can show.

  Wilfred Burchett

  War, Islands, Years

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• I call on all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing further nuclear weapons - and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons.

  Hans Bethe

  Country, Creating, Mass Destruction

  Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Journal, 51:6, 3, November, 1995.

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• Second point is no one here could predict or know that Israel was involved or started producing the hydrogen bomb - the most advanced and powerful atomic bomb that can kill millions of people.

  Mordechai Vanunu

  Powerful, Israel, Hydrogen Bomb

  "Democracy Now!" with Amy Goodman, www.counterpunch.org. August 18, 2004.

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• So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Religious, War, Japan

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• Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger.

  Albert Einstein

  Bombs, Succeed, Fingers

  "Atom: Einstein, the Man Who Started It All". Newsweek Magazine, March 10, 1947.

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• Often in evolutionary processes a species must adapt to new conditions in order to survive. Today the atomic bomb has altered profoundly the nature of the world as we know it, and the human race consequently finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking.

  Albert Einstein

  Thinking, Race, Order

  Albert Einstein (2017). “Einstein on Peace”, p.561, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• Japan suffered terribly from the atomic bomb but never adopted a pose of moral superiority, implying: 'We would never have done it!' The Japanese know perfectly well they would have used it had they had it. They accept the idea that war is war; they give no quarter and accept none. Total war, they recognize, knows no Queensberry Rules. If you develop a devastating new weapon during a total war, you use it; you do not put it into the War Museum.

  George Mikes

  Funny, War, Museums

  George Mikes (1970). “The land of the rising yen: Japan”, Harvard Common Press

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• Against the dark background of the atomic bomb, the United States does not wish merely to present strength, but also the desire and the hope for peace.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Dark, Desire, Wish

  Atoms for Peace, delivered 8 December 1953, United Nations General Assembly

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• Men and women of the world, never again plan war! With this atomic bomb, war can only mean suicide for the human race. From this atomic waste the people of Nagasaki confront the world and cry out: No more war! Let us follow the commandment of love and work together. The people of Nagasaki prostrate themselves before God and pray: Grant that Nagasaki may be the last atomic wilderness in the history of the world.

  Takashi Nagai

  Suicide, War, Mean

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• To talk of atomic energy in terms of atomic bombs is like talking of electricity in terms of the electric chair.

  Pyotr Kapitsa

  Peace, War, Talking

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• The atomic bomb is too dangerous to be loose in a lawless world.

  Harry S. Truman

  Bombs, World, Dangerous

  Radio Report on the Potsdam Conference, delivered 9 August 1945, White House, Washington, D.C.

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• Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Fashion, Atheist, Freedom

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• The handgun would not be my choice of weapon if I knew I was going to a fight. ...I'd choose a rifle, a shotgun, an RPG or an atomic bomb instead.

  Clint Smith

  Fighting, Gun, Rpgs

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• Since the advent of the atomic bomb, the United States has always needed two kinds of enemies. On one level, it has needed a tactical enemy that it can go out and fight in the field in a shooting war. Since 1945, these enemies have been created and appeared as North Korea, North Vietnam, Grenada, El Salvador, Panama, Iraq and now Colombia. On another level, however, the US needs a strategic enemy that will justify outrageous expenditures of capital for strategic weapon systems like ICBMs, Trident submarines and "Star Wars" missile defence systems.

  Michael Ruppert

  Stars, War, Fighting

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• I suppose that history will remember my term in office as the years when the Cold War began to overshadow our lives. I have hardly a day in office that has not been dominated by this all-embracing struggle. And always in the background there has been the atomic bomb. But when history says that my term of office saw the begining of the Cold War, it will also say that in those eight years we have set the course that can win it.

  Harry S. Truman

  War, Struggle, Winning

  Farewell Address, delivered 15 January 1953

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• Our goal there, in my view, is to work and lean strongly on China to put as much pressure. China is one of the few major countries in the world that has significant support for North Korea, and I think we got to do everything we can to put pressure on China. I worry very much about an isolated, paranoid country with atomic bombs.

  Bernie Sanders

  Country, Thinking, Views

  Bernie Sanders during Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire, www.nytimes.com. February 5, 2016.

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• Knowing he [Bob Serber] was going to the [first atom bomb] test, I asked him how he planned to deal with the danger of rattlesnakes. He said, 'I'll take along a bottle of whiskey.' … I ended by asking, 'What would you do about those possibilities [of what unknown phenomena might cause a nuclear explosion to propagate in the atmosphere]?' Bob replied, 'Take a second bottle of whiskey.'

  Edward Teller

  Knowing, Atmosphere, Causes

  "Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics". Book by Edward Teller and Judith L. Shoolery, 2001.

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• The dropping of the Atomic Bomb is a very deep problem... Instead of commemorating Hiroshima we should celebrate... man's triumph over the problem [of transmutation], and not its first misuse by politicians and military authorities.

  Frederick Soddy

  Military, Science, Men

  "In Commemoration of Professor Frederick Soddy" by New Europe Group, 6-7, 1956.

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• Every artist's strictly illimitable country is himself. An artist who plays that country false has committed suicide; and even a good lawyer cannot kill the dead. But a human being who's true to himself - whoever himself may be - is immortal; and all the atomic bombs of all the antiartists in spacetime will never civilize immortality.

  e. e. cummings

  Suicide, Country, Artist

  "I: Six Nonlectures". Book by E. E. Cummings, 1953.

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• The scientists who made the atomic bomb are, in my sense, people with a tragic destiny. You know, there was the US race with Nazi Germany and good evidence that the Germans were more advanced in nuclear physics, and we had to get the bomb first. But then there was the use of that dreadful weapon, or instrument of genocide, and many of the more sensitive scientists turned quickly into anti - nuclear people - and very effective ones.

  Robert Jay Lifton

  Destiny, People, Physics

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Our dreams of a pure virtue are dissolved in a situation in which it is possible to exercise the virtue of responsibility toward a community of nations only by courting the prospective guilt of the atomic bomb.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Dream, Responsibility, Exercise

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2015). “Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics: (Library of America #263)”, p.551, Library of America

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• We're capable of understanding that someone has to drop an atomic bomb on a town of innocent civilians, but not that others have to cut up prostitutes who spread disease and moral depravity in the slums of London. Hence we call the former realism and the latter madness.

  Jo Nesbo

  Cutting, Understanding, Bombs

  Jo Nesbo (2010). “The Snowman: Harry Hole 7”, p.245, Random House

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• It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Art, Military, Hands

  Address before the General Assembly of the United Nations on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, www.iaea.org. December 08, 1953.

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• If you have created the fifth generation of atomic bombs and are testing them already, what position are you in to question the peaceful purposes of other people who want nuclear power? We do not believe in nuclear weapons, period. It goes against the whole grain of humanity.

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  Believe, People, Peaceful

  President Ahmadinejad Delivers Remarks at Columbia University, www.washingtonpost.com. September 24, 2007.

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• I was born in the middle of the Second World War when the United States dropped their atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when millions of people were dying in concentration camps, when half the planet were colonies that belonged to empires. The word feminism didn't exist. And in my lifetime I have seen all these things improved, changed. We are more connected, more informed. We can fight against stuff together in ways we couldn't before.

  Isabel Allende

  War, Fighting, Hiroshima And Nagasaki

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