Pope Benedict XVI Quotes

We do not believe that a nuclear war should be fought and we do not believe that a nuclear war can be won.

I can't believe that this world can go on beyond our generation and on down to succeeding generations with this kind of weapon on both sides poised at each other without someday some fool or some maniac or some accident triggering the kind of war that is the end of the line for all of us. And I just think of what a sigh of relief would go up from everyone on this earth if someday-and this is what I have-my hope, way in the back of my head-is that if we start down the road to reduction, maybe one day in doing that, somebody will say, 'Why not all the way? Let's get rid of all these things'.

Nuclear war is such an emotional subject that many people see the weapons themselves as the common enemy of humanity.

Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age.

We can do better than condone a world in which nuclear weapons are accepted as commonplace.

Nuclear weapons exist. They probably always will. And they work, with horrible efficiency. They threaten the very future of our species. We have no choice but to manage that risk. Never again can we put the task out of our minds; nor trivialize it; nor make it routine.

Yesterday, we fought wars which destroyed cities. Today, we are concerned with avoiding a war which will destroy the earth. We can adapt atomic energy to produce electricity and move ships, but can we control its use in anger?

It is madness for any country to build its policy with an eye to nuclear war.

My feelings of revulsion and foreboding about nuclear weapons had not changed an iota since 1945, and they have never left me. Since I was 14, the overriding objective of my life has been to prevent the occurrence of nuclear war.

It's a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.

Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are not utopian ideals. They are critical to global peace and security.

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

In a nuclear age, each of us is threatened when peace is not secured everywhere.

The salvation of the world ultimately lies in moving towards universal nuclear disarmament, but that's a long distance away.

Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse

I think that if the atomic bomb did nothing more, it scared the people to the point where they realized that either they must do something about preventing war or there is a chance that there might be a morning when we would not wake up.

Nuclear disarmament is the only sane path to a safer world.

I think one country with nuclear weapons is one country too many.

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

As long as some of us choose to rely on nuclear weapons, we continue to risk that these same weapons will become increasingly attractive to others.

In a world which is armed to its teeth with nuclear weapons, every quarrel or difference of opinion may lead to violence of a kind quite different from what is possible today.

I worry about 10, 15, 20, 25 years down the road. Where are we going to be in this age of nuclear weapons, where there is no margin for error?

The way to win an atomic war is to make sure it never starts.

Disarmament has become the urgent imperative of our time. I do not say this because I equate the absence of arms to peace, or because I believe that bringing an end to the nuclear arms race automatically guarantees the peace, or because the elimination of nuclear warheads from the arsenals of the world will bring in its wake that change in attitude requisite to the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. Disarmament is vital today, quite simply, because of the immense destructive capacity of which men dispose.

A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.