Nuclear war

For the love of God, for the love of your children and of the civilization to which you belong, cease this madness. You are mortal men. You are capable of error. You have no right to hold in your hands — there is no one wise enough and strong enough to hold in his hands — destructive power sufficient to put an end to civilized life on a great portion of our planet. ~ George F. Kennan

Nuclear war, or atomic war, is war in which nuclear weapons are used.

Quotes

Alphabetized by author or sourced

• I'd rather be Red than dead.
  • Author unknown. Slogan of Britain's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament supporters; reported in Time (September 15, 1961), p. 30.

• The wheel of Time wrote the first half of the poetry of mass destruction on the black board of the ashes of a funeral ground by dint of a pair of pens of nuclear bombs.
  • Manmohan Acharya, in Gita Milindam [Song of the Bumblebee], Stanza-10, Verse-6. http://www.scribd.com/doc/31240988/gitamilindam-w

• What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening the use of nuclear weapons. And we can't get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves.
  • Martin Amis, Einstein's Monsters (1987), "Introduction: Thinkability"
• The arms race is a race between nuclear weapons and ourselves.
  • Martin Amis, Einstein's Monsters (1987), Introduction: "Thinkability"

• I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
  • Albert Einstein

• What a curious picture it is to find man, homo sapiens, of divine origin, we are told, seriously considering going underground to escape the consequences of his own folly. With a little wisdom and foresight, surely it is not yet necessary to forsake life in the fresh air and in the warmth of the sunlight. What a paradox if our own cleverness in science should force us to live underground with the moles.
  • J. William Fulbright, address to the Foreign Policy Association, New York City (October 20, 1945), in Fulbright of Arkansas: The Public Positions of a Private Thinker (1963).

• For the love of God, for the love of your children and of the civilization to which you belong, cease this madness. You are mortal men. You are capable of error. You have no right to hold in your hands — there is no one wise enough and strong enough to hold in his hands — destructive power sufficient to put an end to civilized life on a great portion of our planet.
  • George F. Kennan, cited in "Obituary: George Kennan dies at 101; devised Cold War policy". Boston Globe. 2005-03-18. 
  • cited in Carroll, James (2006). "Upstream". House of War. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. pp. 581, note 140. ISBN 0618187804. 

• If you are not ready, and did not know what to do, it could hurt you in different ways. It could knock you down, hard, or throw you against a tree or a wall. It is such a big explosion, it can smash in buildings and knock signboards over, and break windows all over town, but if you duck and cover, like Bert [the Turtle], you will be much safer.
  • Duck and Cover (1951), on protecting oneself from an atomic explosion

• Some one may pose the question: will China win her rights over the United States of America, by possessing and dropping the bomb? No, neither China nor the Soviet Union will ever use the bomb unless they are attacked by those who have aggression and war in their very blood. If the Soviet Union did not possess the bomb, the imperialists would speak in other terms with us. We will never attack with the bomb, we are opposed to war, we are ready to destroy the bomb but we keep it for defensive purposes. "It is fear that guards the vineyard," is a saying of our people. The imperialists should be afraid of us and terribly afraid at that.
  • Enver Hoxha, Reject the Revisionist Theses of the XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Anti-Marxist Stand of Krushchev's Group! Uphold Marxism-Leninism!, Speech Delivered by Enver Hoxha as Head of the Delegation of the Party of Labor of Albania Before the Meeting of 81 Communist and Workers Parties, Moscow, (16 November 1960)

• There is a further advantage [to hydrogen bombs]: the supply of uranium in the planet is very limited, and it might be feared that it would be used up before the human race was exterminated, but now that the practically unlimited supply of hydrogen can be utilized, there is considerable reason to hope that homo sapiens may put an end to himself, to the great advantage of such less ferocious animals as may survive. But it is time to return to less cheerful topics.
  • Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), part I, "The World of Science", chapter 3, "The World of Physics"

• Suppose atomic bombs had reduced the population of the world to one brother and one sister, should they let the human race die out? I do not know the answer, but I do not think it can be in the affirmative merely on the ground that incest is wicked.
  • Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954).

• The best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration.
  • Bertrand Russell, The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (1955).

• Once launched, the bomb was absolutely unapproachable and uncontrollable until its forces were nearly exhausted, and from the crater that burst open above it, puffs of heavy incandescent vapour and fragments of visciously punitive rock and mud, saturated with Carolinium, and each a centre of scorching and blistering energy were flung high and far.

  Such was the crowning triumph of military science, the ultimate explosive, that was to give the "decisive touch" to war....

  • H.G. Wells, The World Set Free (1914), p. 117

• In the map of nearly every country of the world three or four more red circles, a score of miles in diameter, mark the position of the dying atomic bombs, and the death areas that men have been forced to abandon around them. Within these areas perished museums, cathedrals, palaces, libraries, galleries of masterpieces, and a vast accumulation of human achievement, whose charred remains lie buried, a legacy of curious material that only future generations may hope to examine....
  • H.G. Wells, The World Set Free (1914), p. 222

Unsourced

• A nuclear war could ruin your whole day!
  • Unknown (Bumper Sticker)