Disarmament Quotes - Page 3

• American foreign policy is not understood by the vast majority of American people. And that this is due to a media that in this country is suppressed by Washington and by the owners of this media, who often tend to be corporate entities close to the [White House] and very often are arms manufacturers with a vested interest in chaos [in] the Middle East. And as a result Americans do not actually get both sides of the story.

  Denis Halliday

  Country, Media, White

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• The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.

  Hannah Arendt

  Death, War, Simple

  Hannah Arendt (1970). “On violence”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• In less than a century we experienced great movement. The youth movement! The labor movement! The civil rights movement! The peace movement! The solidarity movement! The women's movement! The disability movement! The disarmament movement! The gay rights movement! The environmental movement! Movement! Transformation! Is there any reason to believe we are done?

  Holly Near

  Women, Believe, Gay

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• Anyone who thinks we can continue to have world wars but make them nice polite affairs by outlawing this weapon or that should meditate upon the outlawing of the cross-bow by Papal authority. Setting up the machinery for international law and order must surely precede disarmament. The Wild West did not abandon its shooting irons till after sheriffs and courts were established.

  Joel Henry Hildebrand

  War, Nice, Thinking

  "Army's Atomic Bid Viewed in Making". Speech, American Library Association Conference (3 Jul 1947), New York Times, Jule 4, 1947.

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• Lightly armed nations can move toward war just as easily as those which are armed to the teeth, and they will do so if the usual causes of war are not removed.

  Ludwig Quidde

  War, Moving, Usual

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• We have been led to believe that we have come a long way toward world nuclear disarmament. But that is not the case. Our government is not doing all that it could. We must urge our leaders to fulfill the obligations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United States must assume world leadership to end once and for all the threat of nuclear war. It is our moral responsibility.

  Harrison Ford

  War, Believe, Responsibility

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• Let there be more corn and more meat and let there be no hydrogen bombs at all.

  Nikita Khrushchev

  Hydrogen Bomb, Meat, Bombs

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• Among other causes of misfortune which your not being armed brings upon you, it makes you despised.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Peace, War, Arms

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2015). “The Prince”, p.55, Booklassic

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• For the first time in the history of mankind, one generation literally has the power to destroy the past, the present and the future, the power to bring time to an end.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Time, Power, Past

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• This is our message - killing is wrong. Mass killing is wrong. Threatening mass destruction is a denial of our own humanity and is suicidal. When something is wrong we have to stop it. Dismantling the machinery of destruction is thus a practical act of love that we can all join in. Please join us - together we are unstoppable.

  Angie Zelter

  Suicidal, Mass Destruction, Humanity

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• The main reason we are held hostage by the most destructive technology on earth is simple: the complete lack of international resolve to ban nuclear weapons and banish them from the arsenals of the world.

  C. G. Weeramantry

  Technology, Simple, Nuclear

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• ...convince all nuclear powers, including those which have been more reluctant up to now, of the necessity to respect the "vital interests" of all peoples and to become fully aware of the profound truth of the following conclusion which the United Nations approved by unanimity four years ago: "Mankind is confronted with a choice: we must halt the arms race and proceed to disarmament or face annihilation".

  Alfonso Garcia Robles

  Years, Nuclear Disarmament, Race

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• The use of a mere dozen nuclear weapons ... would be a human catastrophe without parallel. ... Because so few weapons can kill so many people, even far-reaching disarmament proposals would leave us implicated in plans for unprecedented slaughter of innocent people. The sole measure that can free us from this burden is abolition.

  Jonathan Schell

  People, Would Be, Nuclear

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• We do not believe that a nuclear war should be fought, and we do not believe that a nuclear war can be won.

  Atal Bihari Vajpayee

  War, Believe, Nuclear

  "Ties with Muslim world rich and strong: Vajpayee". Interview with Amir Taheri, www.arabnews.com. September 5, 2009.

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• I support a very active programme on disarmament and arms control for Iraq, and of course every other country in the world... That does not require economic sanctions...I think we've got to take the risk and give up economic sanctions while hanging on to the disarmament programme and allow the Iraqis to get on with rebuilding their country.

  Denis Halliday

  Country, Giving Up, Thinking

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• Negotiations with Iran, especially, will not be easy under any circumstances, but I suspect that they might be somewhat less difficult if the nuclear-weapon states could show that their requests are part of a broader effort to lead the world, including themselves, toward nuclear disarmament. Preventing further proliferation is essential, but it is not a recipe for success to preach to the rest of the world to stay away from the very weapons that nuclear states claim are indispensable to their own security.

  Hans Blix

  Military, Iran, Nuclear Disarmament

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• We should put away the militaristic outlook. The U.S. should start talking about disarmament, nuclear disarmament, of the region.

  Akbar Ganji

  Talking, Nuclear Disarmament, Should

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• A few profit - and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.

  Smedley Butler

  War, Groups, Wipe

  "War Is A Racket". Smedley Butler's speech in the U.S. (1933); later published as a book "War Is a Racket", 1935.

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• The smaller nations can in fact exercise greater influence on disarmament negotiations than they have hitherto done.

  Alva Myrdal

  Exercise, Done, Facts

  Alva Myrdal's Nobel Lecture in Oslo, Norway, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1982.

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• Nuclear weapons elimination will make all states and their people safer. It is time to assert our right to live in a nuclear weapons free world.

  Jonathan Granoff

  People, Nuclear, World

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• Indeed, the very first resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations - adopted unanimously - called for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

  Joseph Rotblat

  Nuclear, Weapons, Firsts

  Joseph Rotblat, Daisaku Ikeda (2007). “A Quest for Global Peace: Rotblat and Ikeda on War, Ethics and the Nuclear Threat”, p.130, I.B.Tauris

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• There's a very simple reason for focusing on the nuclear issue. Many, many issues are of supreme importance in one way or another, but if we blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, no other issue is really going to matter. Quite possibly there would be no other human beings left to be concerned about anything else.

  Alan Cranston

  Blow, Simple, Nuclear Disarmament

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• Except for fools and madmen, everyone knows that nuclear war would he an unprecedented human catastrophe.

  Carl Sagan

  War, Nuclear, Fool

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• We must create world-wide law and law enforcement as we outlaw world-wide war and weapon

  John F. Kennedy

  War, Law, Enforcement

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• As a doctor, as well as a mother and a world citizen, I wish to practice the ultimate form of preventive medicine by ridding the earth of these technologies that propagate disease, suffering, and death.

  Helen Caldicott

  Mother, Technology, Doctors

  Helen Caldicott, Nancy Herrington, Nahum Stiskin (1982). “Nuclear madness: what you can do! : with a new chapter on Three Mile Island”, Bantam

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