Ronald Reagan Quotes

The aggressor too should know that the preemptive use of nuclear weapons would not insure victory. With modern detection systems and the combat readiness of the Soviet Union's strategic nuclear forces, the United States would not be able to deal a crippling blow to the socialist countries. The aggressor will not be able to evade an all-crushing retaliatory strike

If an SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) system were to keep out ninety percent of incoming nuclear missiles, it would be a ninety percent success and most Americans would be dead.

I would not recommend the use of any atomic weapon, no matter how small, when both sides have the power to destroy the world.

There are two groups of people in the world, the Anglo Saxons and the Soviets who have been stockpiling nuclear weapons. France will not accept a position of permanent and massive inferiority.

The moral high ground in taking the first hit before attacking has been made obsolete by weapons of mass destruction….You cannot wait for a catastrophic event.

Israel’s development of nuclear capability would be a cause for war, no matter how suicidal it would be for us.

Could anyone in his right mind speak seriously of any limited nuclear war? It should be quite clear that the aggressor's actions will instantly and inevitably trigger a devastating counterstroke by the other side. None but completely irresponsible people could maintain that a nuclear war may be made to follow rules adopted beforehand, with nuclear missiles exploding in a "gentlemanly manner" over strictly designated targets and sparing the population.

In the Cuban missile crisis [1962] we had 5,000 nuclear strategic weapons and the Russians had only 300.... Even though we had a 17 to 1 advantage, we were deterred. Even if only ten percent of their missiles got through, tens of millions of Americans would have died. We could not use our nuclear superiority.

Nuclear weapons are only good for deterring. It is insane that two men, sitting on opposite ends of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization.

I have to bring to your notice a terrifying reality: with the development of nuclear weapons Man has acquired, for the first time in history, the technical means to destroy the whole of civilization in a single act.

Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.

The human species really could have faced global thermonuclear war. During seventy years of Cold War we grew used to it.

We have a moral imperative to keep up the search for something better than mutual assured destruction.

Nut With A Nuke

Nuclear weapons are what make us a great power.

A nuclear weapon is not just a football that you can use at will.

There is only one thing worse than one nation having the atomic bomb -- that's two nations having it.

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.

Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological nation plans for it.

The notion that our only strategic choice is MAD (mutually assured destruction)—which means nothing less than an unstable pact to commit instant and total mutual suicide in the event of war—is irrational, immoral and unnecessary.

In the real world of real political leaders a decision that would bring even one hydrogen bomb on one city of one's own country would be recognized as a catastrophic blunder.

If the Third World War is fought with nuclear weapons, the fourth will be fought with bows and arrows.

I say in all sincerity that the nuclear arms race has no military purpose. Wars cannot be fought with nuclear weapons; their existence only adds to our perils because of the illusions which they have generated.

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, miscalculation or madness.