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 |
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*
Uranium is the raw material
of a power-elite who has taken Mother Earth's every living creature hostage.
-- Petra Kelly |
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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
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*
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 |
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*
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 |
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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
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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
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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
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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 |
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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 |
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"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 |
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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
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*
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
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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 |
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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 |
Hiroshima
Day - August 6
Portraits
for illustration purposes - no endorsement implied.
Thanks
to Anukul Gurung for the fairy image of Emily
Thanks to Fletcher Grayson/Gray
Media for creating The Emily Fund logo |
