NO-NUKES QUOTES

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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

 

No-Nukes Quotes

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Hiroshima Day - August 6

 

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