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No-Nukes

* "...as long as we have nuclear weapons on this earth, one could claim that no real life is actually thriving on the earth. We do not have life actualizing its fullest potential as long as there are nuclear weapons."
-- Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba

We cannot and must not allow ourselves to have the message of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fade completely from our minds, and we cannot allow our vision or ideals to fade, either. For if we do, we have but one course left for us. And that flash of light will not only rob us of our vision, but it will rob us of our lives, our progeny, and our very existence.
-- Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba

Our aim is to have a universal nuclear weapons convention signed by the year 2010 and ultimately abolish all nuclear weapons by the year 2020.
-- Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba

Environmental scientists also show us clearly that from the environmental and ecological points of view that nuclear war is not preventable. The only way to get rid of this danger is to abolish all nuclear weapons
-- Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba

What the Hiroshima survivors are telling us is that no one else should ever go through the experience they suffered. An atomic bombing creates a living hell on Earth where the living envy the dead.”
-- Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba

In some ways more painful is the fact that their experience appears to be fading from the collective memory of humankind. Having never experienced an atomic bombing, the vast majority around the world can only vaguely imagine such horror, and these days, John Hersey’s Hiroshima and Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth are all but forgotten. As predicted by the saying, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,’ the probability that nuclear weapons will be used and the danger of nuclear war are increasing.”
-- Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba

“Passing on to younger generations the memories and the will of those who suffered the bombing is the most important step for humankind to survive in the 21st century,”

This Aug. 6 ... is a time of inheritance, of awakening, and of commitment, in which we inherit the commitment of the bomb victims to the abolition of nuclear weapons and realization of genuine world peace,”
-- Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba

 

After over 30 years of building nuclear power plants, there is still no safe way of disposing the contaminated nuclear materials that are produced. These contaminated wastes endanger our environment and the lives of countless generations to come.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

Hiroshima Day is an opportunity to raise awareness about the threat of nuclear weapons and the dangers of nuclear energy. It's the perfect time to urge your Mayor to declare your city a Nuclear Free Zone.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

* We must not only control the weapons that can kill us, we must bridge the great disparities of wealth and opportunity among the peoples of the world, the vast majority of whom live in poverty without hope, opportunity or choices in life. These conditions are a breeding ground for division that can cause a desperate people to resort to nuclear weapons as a last resort. Our only hope lies in the power of our love, generosity, tolerance and understanding and our commitment to making the world a better place for all...
-- Muhammad Ali

If the entire history of mankind were condensed into a single year, our knowledge of how to destroy life on earth with weapons of mass destruction has been acquired in the last thirty seconds. Never again will we lack the knowledge to eliminate the world in a single act of madness. Therefore, we are faced with a dilemma unique in our history. We must not only control the weapons that can kill us, we must bridge the great disparities of wealth and opportunity among the peoples of the world, the vast majority of whom live in poverty without hope, opportunity or choices in life. These conditions are a breeding ground for division that can cause a desperate people to resort to nuclear weapons as a last resort. Our only hope lies in the power of our love, generosity, tolerance and understanding and our commitment to making the world a better place for all of Allah's children.
-- Muhammad Ali

* “Above all else, we need a reaffirmation of political commitment at the highest levels to reducing the dangers that arise both from existing nuclear weapons and from further proliferation.”
-- Kofi Annan
* "The existence of nuclear weapons presents a clear and present danger to life on Earth. Nuclear arms cannot bolster the security of any nation because they represent a threat to the security of the human race. These incredibly destructive weapons are an affront to our common humanity, and the tens of billions of dollars that are dedicated to their development and maintenance should be used instead to alleviate human need and suffering."
-- Oscar Arias Sanchez

* "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

"If we fight a war and win it with H-bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for but the methods we used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia."
-- Hans Bethe

* "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

Today we are rightly in an era of disarmament and dismantlement of nuclear weapons. But in some countries nuclear weapons development still continues. Whether and when the various Nations of the World can agree to stop this is uncertain. But individual scientists can still influence this process by withholding their skills.
-- Hans Bethe

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

* "We're worrying for the country and we're worrying for our kids. We say NO radioactive waste dump in our ngura in our country. Don't waste our country. Don't waste our future."
-- Eileen Kampakuta Brown & The Kungka Tju

We know the poison from the radioactive dump will go down under the ground and leak into the water. We drink from this water. The animals drink from this water. We're worried that the animals will become poisoned, and we'll become poisoned in our turn.
-- Eileen Kampakuta Brown & The Kungka Tju

I've also gotten to play in front of a million people in Central Park when there was a grass roots movement calling for nuclear disarmament - it was about 1982 - they called it Peace Sunday.
-- Jackson Browne

* "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

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat….
-- General Lee Butler

There are still thousands of warheads loaded on operational systems and standing on high states of alert on virtually hair-trigger posture. And you have to ask yourself: Why is that? Who is the enemy? What is the threat?
-- General Lee Butler

* "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

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.
~ Jimmy Carter

* "The risk of an all-out nuclear holocaust destroying all life on the planet has diminished, but the danger of actual nuclear weapons use has increased."
-- David Cortright

If the United States wants to prevent other countries from acquiring the bomb, it must be prepared to reduce and eventually end its own reliance on nuclear weapons.
-- David Cortright

Reducing the nuclear danger will require a universal, consistent opposition to all forms of weapons development
-- David Cortright

* "A common denominator in every single nuclear accident -- a nuclear plant or on a nuclear submarine -- is that before the specialists even know what has happened, they rush to the media saying, 'There's no danger to the public.' They do this before they themselves know what has happened because they are terrified that the public might react violently, either by panic or by revolt."
~ Jacques Cousteau

* "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

Unprecedented warnings by officials most closely linked with nuclear arms negotiations and defense strategy indicate that we are running out of time. If we fail to act soon, the scars of a major nuclear disaster will mark our immediate and distant future.
-- Alan Cranston

The probability of a fatal nuclear detonation is greater now than at any time during the Cold War. As the Russian military deteriorates, and as rogue governments and terrorists seek to acquire nuclear capabilities, the threat continues to grow.
-- Alan Cranston

As they were during the Cold War, urban population centers remain the most likely targets of a nuclear attack. Now, however, an attack may come without warning from an unknown enemy, to achieve unclear motives.
-- Alan Cranston

The explosion of a terrorist’s single nuclear device in a major metropolitan center would trigger an unparalleled humanitarian and environmental disaster. An accidental military launch of multiple warheads could result in a worldwide nuclear holocaust. Medical researchers and military analysts forebode grim consequences.
-- Alan Cranston

* "The risks of transporting deadly nuclear waste, the environmental justice impacts and the long-term health effects of both these projects are untenable...We cannot afford to be silent on these important issues."
~ James Cromwell

 

* I know that nuclear is better than fossil fuels when it comes to carbon dioxide, but nuclear energy is by no means clean. We don't know what to do with the waste we already have and it seems like a bad idea to me to make more when we have so many cleaner options such as wind and solar.
-- Sheryl Crow

* "The nuclear arms race is like two people sitting in a pool of gasoline spending all their time making matches."
-- John Denver

* "We must unite to make nuclear weapons a horror of the past."
-- Michael Douglas

I have met with political leaders, legislators, and diplomats, seeking the next steps to press in reducing and eliminating the nuclear threat in this century. I have participated in public coalitions developing programmes for action to combat the global rash of small arms. All are trying and making a difference.
-- Michael Douglas

* "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

* I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
-- Albert Einstein

* 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

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.
-- 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

* The United States strongly seeks a lasting agreement for the discontinuance of nuclear weapons tests. We believe that this would be an important step toward reduction of international tensions and would open the way to further agreement on substantial measures of disarmament.
-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower

* 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

”It is urgent to prevent new U.S. aggression. The time is now for the world to say ‘no’ to U.S. threats of air attack against Iran, and to the very notion of a nuclear first-use ‘option’ by America or any other nation.”
-- Daniel Ellsberg

My activities, for which I gratefully accept this Award, are today what they have been for over thirty-five years and will be for the rest of my life: to counter governmental secrecy about the nuclear arms race that threatens the survival of life on earth; and to help build a world movement that will prevent a first use since Nagasaki of nuclear explosions, prevent or end interventions that could lead to such an event, and bring about a world free of nuclear weapons.
-- Daniel Ellsberg

When faced with world problems – like hunger, overpopulation, nuclear weapons, the arms trade – you may be among those who are overwhelmed by a feeling of “Help! What on earth can I, just one person, do about this?” Take heart. That’s a sane response. It’s the basis for a whole new attitude to world problems, where change at the level of the individual is more and more recognised as essential to change in huge world systems.
-- Scilla Elworthy

Instead of starting a new nuclear arms race, now is the time to reclaim our Nation's position of leadership on nuclear nonproliferation efforts.
-- Dianne Feinstein

* 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

* "It is really a moral and ethical question. Should we be moving the already insane and expensive global arms race into space or should the U.S. be doing everything it can now, before it is too late, to create international agreements to keep space for peace?"
~ Bruce Gagnon

“The role of the U.S. in the new world corporate order is going to be to export security. That means endless wars and weapons in space. The Pentagon will send our kids off to foreign lands to suppress opposition to corporate globalization. How will we ever end America’s addiction to war and violence as long as our communities are dependent on military spending for jobs? We must work to convert the military industrial complex to sustainable technologies like windpower, solar, and mass transit.”
~ Bruce Gagnon

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...
~ Mohandas Gandhi

* We should put away the militaristic outlook. The U.S. should start talking about disarmament, nuclear disarmament, of the region.
~ Akbar Ganji

* The fact that lately some circles, not less powerful by their small size, have been actively promoting certain theories, as dangerous as they are illusory, of a "limited", "winnable" or "protracted" nuclear war, as well as their obsession of "nuclear superiority", make it advisable to bear always in mind that the immediate goal of all States, as was expressly declared in the Final Document of the Special Assembly of 1978, "is that of the elimination of the danger of a nuclear war".
~ Alfonso García Robles

If disarmament, as I have taken the liberty to suggest, were in the future to become the decisive criterion for the evaluation by the Nobel Committee of the activities for peace, it would constitute, just as the Campaign which I have mentioned, another invaluable element to 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 García Robles

“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

* It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason.
~ Mikhail Gorbachev

* 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

* Nuclear weapons have forced us to consider whether we will be the last generation. They challenge the moral dimension of our humanity. Our technological abilities must not outstrip our moral insights, rendering us less than fully human. For in this age, acting without reliance on the gifts of law, morality and wisdom will be lethal. What right do we have to place all life on the planet at risk in the service of a human construction, the state, when it is presently legally required and within our political means to globally eliminate all nuclear weapons? 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

“The nuclear weapon is obsolete. I want to get rid of them all.”
-- General Charles A. Horner, US Air Force (ret).

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 Humphrey

We invite people working for peace to span generations and national boundaries, and gather together to communicate. Let us firmly join hands and foster an even stronger network for nuclear abolition and peace.
-- Iccho Itoh

* The time has come for those nations that rely on the force of nuclear armaments to respectfully heed the voices of peace-loving people, not least the atomic bomb survivors, to strive in good faith for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, and to advance towards the complete abolishment of all such weapons.
-- Iccho Itoh

I want to see us to explore outer space. But I want to do it safely, without the loss of human life, and democratically: where is the free-wheeling debate on this question? Only one force can stop this mission: the will of the American people. They have not been asked. Do they want to endanger their loved ones, their industry with this launch? One force is more powerful than plutonium, the spirit of the American people united."
-- Michio Kaku

* Uranium is the raw material of a power-elite who has taken Mother Earth's every living creature hostage.
-- Petra Kelly

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

* Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us… The mere existence of modern weapons … is a source of horror and discord and distrust.
-- John F. Kennedy

* If we are to achieve a world free from nuclear weapons, we need the involvement of young people. Youth have energy, enthusiasm and many good ideas to share. Most importantly, however, it is young people who will be inheriting the problems which have been left to them by the generations past.
-- Marc Kielburger

* Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man's creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the nations of the world.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

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

* Hope is not enough to change the world, to bring peace, to end starvation and poverty, to provide a decent education for all children, or to prevent nuclear holocaust. Yet it is a critical starting point for building a better and brighter future. All of us are challenged to connect hope to action until we have created a might river that will carve a new path to the future.
-- David Krieger

* We all have choices. We can build walls or we can build bridges. We can give our talents to creating weapons of annihilation, as so many scientists have done, or we can work to find solutions to humanities greatest problems. Our orientation is found not only in our acts, but also in the policies we support or oppose.
-- David Krieger

* 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

* As citizen-activists the world over merge, they can become an irresistible force to create peace and protect the planet. From here will come a new movement to abolish nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction. From here will come the demand for sustainable communities, for new systems of energy, transportation and commerce. From here comes the future rushing in on us. How does one acquire the capacity for active citizenship? The opportunities exist every day...Active citizenship begins with an envisioning of the desired outcome and a conscious application of spiritual principles. -- Dennis Kucinich

We cannot by ourselves reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world, but we are doing what has to be done all over the world if those weapons are one day to be eliminated. We will not contemplate any circumstance in which their possession or threatened use is justified. We reject the secrecy and hypocrisy which surrounds the continuing refinement of the technology.
-- David Lange

* Our nuclear free status is a statement of our belief that we and our fellow human beings can build the institutions which will one day allow us all to renounce the weapons of mass destruction. We are a small country and what we can do is limited. But in this as in every other great issue, we have to start somewhere.
-- David Lange

New Zealand's nuclear free movement is a broad-based and popular movement. Our nuclear free status is a challenge to much that is accepted as orthodox in international relations. It was formally adopted in the cold war era as a form of resistance to the dismal doctrines of nuclear deterrence. It is still a rebuke to the unprincipled exercise of economic power and military might.
-- David Lange

Our nuclear free status means that we decline to acquiesce in the strategies of nuclear deterrence. We will not turn a blind eye to them, and pretend that the weapons are no longer a threat. We will not in any way tolerate the testing of nuclear weapons, or their manufacture, or their deployment.
-- David Lange

* Every adult in the world has some sense that he or she might be obliterated at any time by these weapons that we have created.
-- Robert Jay Lifton

* Drawing from the tragic lessons of nuclear atrocities experienced by the Indigenous Peoples we recognize that the testing, development and use of nuclear weapons is a crime against all humanitarian law…
-- Hilda Lini

* "We physicians have focused on the nuclear threat as the singular issue of our era. We are not indifferent to other human rights and hard-won civil liberties. But first we must be able to bequeath to our children the most fundamental of all rights, which preconditions all others; the right to survival.
-- Bernard Lown

I see nuclear weapons as the ultimate evil, not just evil, but the ultimate evil with the potential to make life unlivable on this planet.
-- Bernard Lown

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

nuclear bombs have made mass murder a reality. Nuclear bombs threaten humankind.
-- Bernard Lown

As long as we rationalize nuclear weapons as “necessary” in order to save American lives, then nuclear weapons will never be gotten rid of.
-- Bernard Lown

We will forever live with the danger of nuclear weapons because the nuclear genie has been let out of the bottle. Knowledge cannot be erased once it arrives. That’s the nature of ideas, that’s the nature of scientific advancement, and that’s the nature of widening the horizon of human understanding. The point is that you have to learn to live with the world that has been created, but to do this we must structure a society that is less asymmetric and more equal. We must find a way to make sure that the fruits produced by the world are enjoyed equally. That doesn’t mean everybody will be equal, but that people will not feel constantly cheated out of their patrimony, or their God-given rights like shelter, food, health, and education and therefore not be denied their human potential. 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

* The right of an individual to refuse to kill, to torture, or to participate in the preparation for the nuclear destruction of humanity seems to me to be fundamental.
-- Sean MacBride

The big powers are traveling on the dangerous road of armament. The signpost just ahead of us is 'Oblivion.' Can the march on this road be stopped? Yes, if public opinion uses the power it now has.
-- Sean MacBride


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

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not.
-- Robert McNamara

* Environmentalists have long been fond of saying that the sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away.
~ Stephanie Mills

* Our immediate striving must be aimed at preventing what, in the present situation, is the greatest threat to the very survival of mankind, the nuclear threat.
-- Alva Myrdal

* The sheer folly of trying to defend a nation by destroying all life on the planet must be apparent to anyone capable of rational thought. Nuclear capability must be reduced to zero, globally, permanently. There is no other option.
-- Queen Noor of Jordan

The single biggest threat that we face is a nuclear weapon or some weapon of mass destruction. What that means is that we have to be extraordinarily aggressive and vigilant in controlling nuclear proliferation.
-- Barack Obama

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

* The foes now are universal - poverty, famine, religious radicalization, desertification, drugs, proliferation of nuclear weapons, ecological devastation. They threaten all nations, just as science and information are the potential friends of all nations. Classical diplomacy and strategy were aimed at identifying enemies and confronting them. Now they have to identify dangers, global or local, and tackle them before they become disasters.
-- Shimon Peres

 

“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)

We seek the elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.
-- Ronald Reagan

 

* "If nuclear power plants are safe, let the commerical insurance industry insure them. Until these most expert judges of risk are willing to gamble with their money, I'm not willing to gamble with the health and safety of my family."
-- Donna Reed

* Extending social and economic development throughout the world and eliminating nuclear weapons from military arsenals are two fundamental prerequisites to replacing the culture of war with a culture of peace, and building true security for all the world's people.
-- Douglas Roche

* "Nuclear disarmament is not just an ardent desire of the people, as expressed in many resolutions of the United Nations. It is a legal commitment ... for the sake of humanity - we must get rid of all nuclear weapons."
-- Joseph Rotblat

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

If the militarily most powerful - and least threatened - states need nuclear weapons for their security, how can one deny such security to countries that are truly insecure? The present nuclear policy is a recipe for proliferation. It is a policy for disaster.
-- Joseph Rotblat

* 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
* " This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate.
-- Bertrand Russell

* Except for fools and madmen, everyone knows that nuclear war would he an unprecedented human catastrophe.
-- Carl Sagan

It is now almost 40 years since the invention of nuclear weapons. We have not yet experienced a global thermonuclear war -- although on more than one occasion we have come tremulously close. I do not think our luck can hold forever. Men and machines are fallible, as recent events remind us. Fools and madmen do exist, and sometimes rise to power. Concentrating always on the near future, we have ignored the long-term consequences of our actions. We have placed our civilization and our species in jeopardy. Fortunately, it is not yet too late. We can safeguard the planetary civilization and the human family if we so choose. There is no more important or more urgent issue.
-- Carl Sagan

* 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

[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

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

* We are the generation that brought the bomb in. We have got to be the generation that should take it out.
-- Martin Sheen

The last major childhood disease remains and it's the worst of them all: nuclear war.
-- Beverly Sills

 

Dear Mr. Andropov,

My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren't please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war. This question you do not have to answer, but I would like to know why you want to conquer the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight.

Sincerely,

Samantha Smith

* Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age.
-- Adlai Stevenson


* here seems now no reasonable justification for continuing any civil plutonium program.
-- Jinzaburo Takagi

My recent activities have been concentrated on criticism on and actions against Japan's and worldwide plutonium programs, since it is, as I believe, one of the greatest threats to the world...
-- Jinzaburo Takagi

 

"Now we have something that could really extinguish life on our planet. Mankind has not found itself in a similar situation since the end of the palaeolithic age…. In fact, the threat to mankind's survival has been much greater since 1945 than it was during the first million years of history."
-- Arnold Toynbee

“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

 

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

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.
-- Christopher Weeramantry

But elimination will only happen if all countries — nuclear and non-nuclear states — genuinely work towards this result. Nuclear states must abolish their arsenals, as was indicated by the unanimous opinion of the international Court of Justice, the highest international tribunal. The five nuclear states seem to expect others to refrain from obtaining bombs while at the same time maintaining their own caches of deadly weapons.
-- Christopher Weeramantry

* The creation of a nuclear weapons convention is not only achievable, it is imperative if civilisation is to survive.
-- Christopher Weeramantry

* Mankind needs peace more than ever, for our entire planet, threatened by nuclear war, is in danger of total destruction. A destruction only man can provoke, only man can prevent.
-- Elie Wiesel

* We believe in taking down the barriers, but we also believe in the most energetic reconciliation among peoples by getting them to know each other, talk each other's languages, understand each other's fears and beliefs, getting to know each other physically, philosophically, and spiritually. It is much harder to kill your near neighbor than the thousands of unknown and hostile aliens at the other end of a nuclear missile. We have to create a world in which there are no unknown, hostile aliens at the other end of any missiles.
-- Betty Williams

* ...nuclear threats and nuclear weapons are the last argument of weak, stressed and irresponsible politicians. People must act very quicky to stop the movement to nuclear war.
-- Alla Yaroshinskaya

The world was shaken twice in the last decade: once when the USSR dissolved, and once when terrorists attacked the US on September 11. In the Gorbachev era, we actually lost our way to change the world for the better. We lost some wonderful possibilities to begin a process for deep reductions of the stockpile, and to eliminate nuclear weapons once and for all. Now one of the main obstacles to achieving a nuclear-free world is the new US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). What can we do? Leaders are still sure that peace is possible because their countries have nuclear weapons. I am sure nuclear threats and nuclear weapons are the last argument of weak, stressed and irresponsible politicians. People must act very quicky to stop the movement to nuclear war. But Russian people do not wish to spend money for new weapons of mass destruction; Russian people wish to build a new peaceful life after years of the Communists? totalitarian regime and many years of transition-period chaos. Russia today wishes to build its civil economy, not military industry. But the US NPR and the US deployment of space-based national missile defense (NMD) will provoke Russia to build new nuclear armaments. Combined with NATO expansion (to the Russian border), these US initiatives will break down the whole world order, and every nation will pay their own political and economic price for that nuclear apartheid.
-- Alla Yaroshinskaya

A convention on the comprehensive ban of nuclear weapons should be negotiated. Since biological and chemical weapons have been prohibited, there is no reason why nuclear weapons, which are more destructive, should not be comprehensively banned and thoroughly destroyed. All it takes to reach this objective is strong political will.
-- Jiang Zemin


 

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