John Polanyi Quotes

Dwight Eisenhower… supported the nuclearization of the military and the militarization of nuclear weapons as a cost saving way of deterring the Soviets. Under Eisenhower, custody or nuclear weapons shifted from the civilian Atomic Energy Commission to the military.

This means that the only function of nuclear weapons, while they exist, is to deter a nuclear attack.

You probably don't need more weapons than what's required to destroy every city on earth. There's only 2,300 cities. So, the United States, by that criteria, only needs 2,300 nuclear weapons - well, we've got more than 25,000!

We are told that the possession of nuclear weapons - in some cases even the testing of these weapons - is essential for national security. But this argument can be made by other countries as well.

The only use for an atomic bomb is to keep somebody else from using one.

We continue to have nuclear weapons relied on as a weapon of choice. If that policy were to continue, we continue to have countries who are in a security bind, if you like, or perceive themselves to be in security bind to look for acquisition of nuclear weapons.

I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new-one which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use. That new language is the language of atomic warfare.

The whole idea of a nuclear system is to have a deterrent where we decide if we're going to use it.

Nuclear weapons are infinitely less important in our foreign policy than they were in the days of the Cold War. I don't think we need nuclear weapons any longer.

Individual scientists like myself - and many more conspicuous - pointed to the dangers of radioactive fallout over Canada if we were to launch nuclear weapons to intercept incoming bombers.

It would be our policy to use nuclear weapons wherever we felt it necessary to protect our forces and achieve our objectives.

Our nuclear weapons are meant purely as a deterrent against nuclear adventure by an adversary.

The greatest achievement of America in the last 70 years has been the prevention of a post Nagasaki nuclear proliferation.

Nuclear weapons are what make us a great power.

I could not conceive of any President engaging in all-out nuclear war unless we were in danger of all-out devastation ourselves.

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

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.

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.

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

We will use nuclear weapons whenever it serves our vital interests.

We were able and we had a plan to launch nuclear test in 1984, but then President General Zia had opposed the move.

With respect to the relationship between nuclear weapons and the advent of détente, one has to consider two things. One, the nature of nuclear weapons in themselves, and secondly, the advent of nuclear parity.

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.