Lanford Wilson Quotes

Anyone who saw Nagasaki would suddenly realize that they'd been kept in the dark by the United States government as to what atomic bombs can do.

Japan is the only country in the world which suffered from the scourge of nuclear weapons.

The emergence of the Atomic Age brought the previously inchoate and 'free-floating' anxiety of many people into sharp focus.

It's interesting - in 'Fail Safe,' as well, they didn't back off. We were raised with kind of this spectrum of that Armageddon and lived under it, so those were probably the films. 'Fail Safe' sort of haunted me.

In the first weeks after Hiroshima, extravagant statements by President Truman and other official spokesmen for the U.S. government transformed the inception of the atomic age into the most mythologized event in American history.

This is the reality of nuclear weapons: they may trigger a world war; a war which, unlike previous ones, destroys all of civilization.

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

The real abhorrent consequence of the invention of atomic bombs is the fact that we still have them and they're spreading.

We were fortunate to have the Russians as our childhood enemies. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they had the temerity to drop a nuclear weapon.

Even with the best intentions, you can have a nuclear war, a nuclear holocaust, through miscalculation, through accidents.

I remembered being young in the late '70s and early '80s and growing up at the height of the Cold War. I remembered how scared I was of nuclear weapons, how often I though about them and about the possibility of everything and everyone I knew vanishing in a second in temperatures hotter than the centre of the sun.

The decision to use the atom bomb on Japanese cities, and the consequent buildup of enormous nuclear arsenals, was made by governments, on the basis of political and military perceptions.

What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it's been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.

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

I think all of you know there is no adequate defense against massive nuclear attack.

You just activated a nuclear warhead, my friend.

The decision to use any kind of nuclear weapon, even the tactical ones, presents such a risk of it getting out of control so quickly …

The first use of the nuclear weapon gives a great advantage to the user.

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

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.

The lethal possibility of such atomic action in the future is frightening, and while we are the first to have it in our possession, there is a certainty that it will in the future be developed by potential enemies and that it will probably be used against us.

The papers are full of the atomic bomb [Hiroshima] which is going to revolutionize everything and blow us all to buggery. Not a bad idea.

The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available. ... Therefore, we must expect that if another war — a serious war — breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form.

Most of our thinking about nuclear weapons is a hangover from different era …. Much about war, peace and global security changed after Hiroshima and changed again … with the end of the Cold war. It is high time our thinking changed as well.

The prospect of a nuclear war is not a bad thing because defeating capitalism would be worth losing up to two-thirds of the world’s population.