QUOTES
Lovers
of freedom, lovers of social justice, disarmers, peacekeepers, civil disobeyers,
democrats, civil-rights activists, and defenders of the environment are legions
in a single multiform cause, and they will gain strength by knowing it, taking
encouragement from it, and when appropriate and opportune, pooling their efforts.
...force,
always a tragedy for both user and the one upon which it is used, has become less
and less effective in deciding political matters...
Living
in truth—directly doing in your immediate surroundings what you think needs doing,
saying what you think is true and needs saying, acting the way you think people
should act—is a form a protest.
The
spread of democracy is a wonderful thing—it is a necessary foundation for peace—and
it can happen. But it cannot be advanced by force, and still less by the creation
of a new empire, an idea that is as unworkable as it morally mistaken. Empire,
the embodiment of force, violates equity on a global scale. No lover of freedom
can give it support. It is especially contrary to the founding principles of the
United States.
[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.
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.
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.
Cooperative
power. It's the kind of power that we generate when we work together in concert,
peacefully, for common causes. Its point of origin is the heart and mind of each
ordinary person.
