QUOTES
War
must cease to be an admissible social institution. We must learn to resolve our
disputes by means other than military confrontation.
Whatever
system of governance is eventually adopted, it is important that it carries the
people with it. We need to convey the message that safeguarding our common property,
humankind, will require developing in each of us a new loyalty: a loyalty to mankind.
It calls for the nurturing of a feeling of belonging to the human race. We have
to become world citizens.
Technology
is driving us together. In many ways we are becoming like one family. With the
global threats resulting from science and technology, the whole of humankind now
needs protection. We have to extend our loyalty to the whole of the human race.
The quest for
a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn
how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than by compulsion;
if in the process we learn to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient
with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive
to embark on this great task.
"I
saw science as being in harmony with humanity. I did not imagine that the second
half of my life would be spent on efforts to avert a mortal danger to humanity
created by science. The practical release of nuclear energy was the outcome of
many years of experimental and theoretical research. It had great potential for
the common good. But the first the general public learned about the discovery
was the news of the destruction of Hiroshima by the atom bomb. A splendid achievement
of science and technology had turned malign ... Let me remind you that 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."
