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