 |
At
that time a senator who was on the Joint Committee
of Atomic Energy said rather quietly, 'You
know, we're having a little problem with waste
these days.' I didn't know what he meant then,
but I know now.
-- David
R. Brower
Is
the minor convenience of allowing the present
generation the luxury of doubling its energy
consumption every 10 years worth the major
hazard of exposing the next 20,000 generations
to this lethal waste?
-- David
R. Brower
|
"It
is my profound conviction that nuclear weapons
did not, and will not, of themselves prevent
major war. To the contrary, I am persuaded that
the presence of these hideous devices unnecessarily
prolonged and intensified the Cold War. In today's
security environment, threats of their employment
have been fully exposed as neither credible
nor of any military utility."
-- General
Lee Butler, head of US Strategic Nuclear
Forces 1991-1994. |
 |
It
is a measure of arrogance to assert that a nuclear
weapons-free world is impossible when 95% of the nations
of the world are already nuclear-free. I think that
the vast majority of people on the face of this earth
will endorse the proposition that nuclear weapons
have no place among us. There is no security in nuclear
weapons. It is a fool’s game.”
-- General
Lee Butler, head of US Strategic Nuclear Forces
1991-1994
“I
am the only person who ever looked at all twelve thousand
five hundred of our targets. And when I got through
I was horrified. Deterrence was a formula for disaster.
We escaped disaster by the grace of God. If you ask
one person who has lived in this arena his whole career,
I have come to one conclusion. This has to end. This
must stop. This must be our highest priority.”
-- General
Lee Butler, head of US Strategic Nuclear Forces
1991-1994
Nuclear
weapons play on our deepest fears and pander to our
darkest instincts. They corrode our sense of humanity,
numb our capacity for moral outrage, and make thinkable
the unimaginable. They prey on democracies and totalitarian
societies alike, shrinking the norms of civilized
behavior and dimming the prospects for escaping the
savagery so powerfully imprinted on our genetic code.
-- General
Lee Butler, head of US Strategic Nuclear Forces
1991-1994
People
who say to me that the elimination of nuclear weapons
is utopian have somehow managed to completely ignore
the fact that the end of the Cold War was a far more
utopian prospect only ten years ago than eliminating
nuclear weapons is now.
--
General
Lee Butler, head of US Strategic Nuclear Forces
1991-1994
 |
"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 |
“American
leaders have declared that nuclear weapons will remain
the cornerstone of US national security indefinitely.
In truth, as the world’s only remaining superpower,
nuclear weapons are the sole military source of our
national insecurity. We, and the whole world, would
be much safer if nuclear weapons were abolished.”
-- Rear Admiral Eugene J Carroll, US Navy.
The
nuclear arms race is like two people sitting
in a pool of gasoline spending all their time
making matches.
-- John
Denver |
 |
 |
"Human
beings should only use technology which if the
worst case happens, it leads to an acceptable
damage. Definitely nuclear energy is not in
that category. I want an industrial world where
people are allowed to make errors. Because human
creativity has to do with being allowed to make
errors. We want an error-friendly environment."
-- Hans-Peter
Dürr |
Since
I do not forsee that atomic energy is to be
a great boon for a long time, I have to say
that for the present it is a menace. Perhaps
it is well that it should be. It may intimidate
the human race into bringing order into its
international affairs, which, without the presence
of fear, it would not do.
-- Albert
Einstein |
|
 |
“[Not
achieving a nuclear test ban] would have to
be classed as the greatest disappointment of
any administration of any decade, of any time
and of any party.”
-- President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961 |
“It
is my view that there is no sensible military use
for nuclear weapons, whether “strategic” weapons,
“tactical” weapons, “theatre” weapons, weapons at
sea or weapons in space…”
-- Admiral Noel Gayler, U.S. Navy (ret.)
 |
"Licensing
a nuclear power plant is in my view, licensing
random premeditated murder. First of all, when
you license a plant, you know what you're doing--so
it's premeditated. You can't say, "I didn't
know." Second, the evidence on radiation-producing
cancer is beyond doubt. I've worked fifteen
years on it [as of 1982], and so have many others.
It is not a question any more: radiation produces
cancer, and the evidence is good all the way
down to the lowest doses."
-- John
Gofman |
"Ionizing
radiation may well be the most important single cause
of cancer, birth defects and genetic disorders...
The stakes for human health are very, very high in
radiation matters. It is essential that people take
no chance that conflict-of-interest is producing radiation
databases which cannot be trusted."
-- John
Gofman
“The
nuclear weapon is obsolete. I want to get rid of them
all.”
-- General Charles A. Horner, US Air Force (ret).
The
nuclear bomb is the most useless weapon ever invented.
It can be employed to no rational purpose. It is not
even
an effective defense against itself.
-- George F. Kennan
During
World War II, the Nazis put their victims into
gas chambers and then incinerated them in ovens.
While the Nazis took their victims to the incinerators,
those who possess and threaten to use nuclear
weapons plan to take these weapons — these portable
incinerators — to the victims.
-- David
Krieger, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation |
 |
 |
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 |
Nuclear
weapons production and testing has involved extensive
health and environmental damage …. One of the most
remarkable features of this damage has been the readiness
of governments to harm the very people that they claimed
they were protecting by building these weapons for
national security reasons. In general, this harm was
inflicted on people in disregard of democratic norms.
Secrecy, fabrication of data, cover-ups in the face
of attempted public inquiry, and even human experiments
without informed consent have all occurred in nuclear
weapons production and testing programs.
-- Arjun Makhijani, President, Institute for Energy
and Environmental Research
It
did not take atomic weapons to make man want peace,
a peace that would last. But the atomic bomb was
the turn of the screw. It has made the prospect of
future war unendurable.
-- J. Robert Oppenheimer
“Today--on
what happens to be the 30th anniversary of the talks
that led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty -- I declare
my hope and declare it from the bottom of my heart
that we will eventually see the time when the number
of nuclear weapons is down to zero and the world is
a much better place.”
-- General Colin Powell, US Army (June 10, 1993)
If
you are religious, then remember that this bomb
is man's challenge to God. It's worded quite
simply: We have the power to destroy everything
you have created. If you're not religious, then
look at it this way. This world of ours is four
thousand, six hundred million years old. It
could end in an afternoon.
-- Arundhati
Roy |
 |
 |
[A]
new generation, innocent of the divisions of
the Cold War, this coming-of-age. ... If its
members do not feel the urgency to escape the
nuclear danger that some of its parents felt,
neither has it developed the deep attachment
to nuclear arms also often found among their
parents, including most of the governing class.
... The call for abolition should therefore
be, among other things, a call from an older
generation to younger one.
-- Jonathan
Schell |
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
Of
course, some will say the goal [of abolition] is a
utopian dream of human perfection. We needn't worry.
There will be more than enough sins left for everyone
to commit after we have taken nuclear bombs away from
ourselves.
-- Jonathan
Schell
The
last major childhood disease remains and it's the
worst of them all: nuclear war.
-- Beverly Sills
“As
long as the two nuclear superpowers maintain arsenals
in the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, there
is no way they can with any consistency urge that
other nations not be allowed to acquire theses weapons.”
-- Admiral Stansfield Turner, USN (ret). and CIA director
(1977-81)
"I
have sacrificed my freedom and risked my life in order
to expose the danger of nuclear weapons which threatens
this whole region. I
acted on behalf of all citizens and all of humanity."
-- Mordechai Vanunu
"More
and more states are realizing the deficit in possessing
nuclear weapons and that nuclear weapons do not promote
economic development in most of the undeveloped states.
These countries are ready to back and support any
initiative that will bring the end of nuclear weapons
in the entire world. They know that the abolition
of nuclear weapons in Europe, the US and the entire
world will only bring help and encouragement to global
economic activities, including globalization. So anti-nuclear
activists should work in this new field to use economic
reasons and alliances to defeat nuclear weapons. This
could be done especially at economic summits like
the G-8 and WTO meetings where decisions or declarations
could be issued to abolish nuclear weapons. Rather
than fighting the WTO like anarchist environmentalists,
we can recreate the WTO and G-8 to begin working toward
zero nuclear weapons."
-- Mordechai Vanunu
