Thor Heyerdahl Quotes

No universal history leads from savagery to humanitarianism, but there is one leading from the slingshot to the atom bomb.

We are fortunate to have witnessed this remarkable event which is but a foretaste of a complete revolution in warfare.

The high stage of world-industrial development in capitalistic production finds expression in the extraordinary technical development and destructiveness of the instruments of war.

So far from being an isolated phenomenon the late war is only an example of the disruptive result that we may constantly expect from the progress of science.

War is progressive because all instruments of war are progressive.

The primary function of war has not within storage time in which he really changed by the advent of new weapons. The unchanging principle of combat is to inflict on the enemy the maximum amount of wounds and death in a minimum of time and as cheaply as possible.

Desert Storm seemingly reversed one of the principal lessons of Vietnam—namely that excessive reliance on technology in war is a recipe for disaster.

Military technology is like a continuing chess game, with no final move.

The distance at which it can strike, and the destructive power of such a quasi-intelligent machine being for all practical purposes unlimited, the gun, the armor of the battleship and the wall of the fortress, lose their import and significance. One can prophesy with a Daniel's confidence that skilled electricians will settle the battles of the near future.

The simple rule about weapons is that if they can be built, they will be built.

Bushnell’s machine is almost perfected for the destruction of the [British] fleet in Boston Harbor.

I think these things [firearms] were invented by Satan himself, for they can’t be defended against with [ordinary] weapons and fists. All human strength vanishes when confronted with firearms. A man is dead before he sees what’s coming..

In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellow men on a single plane---the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before

In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane — the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future.

One of the main reasons that we have made so much progress in so many technological areas in recent years is that many people care about those areas.

Modern warfare has become too techno-ish for my sensibilities.

Rich people are the experimental ground for every new development. The nature of progress is that what begins as a luxury for the rich becomes a necessity for the poor as it's developed and passed on.

From the original watchtower through the anchored balloon to the reconnaissance aircraft and remote sensing-satellites, one and the same function has been indefinitely repeated, the eye's function being the function of a weapon.

You can't uninvent things, you can only make them obsolete... Ronald Reagan understood that the surest method of neutralising any weapon is to make it obsolete.

I believe that solution to all problems is in development. Development is also the solution to the tension that people talk about.

Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer.

Science unfolded her treasures and her secrets to the desperate demands of men, and placed in their hands agencies and apparatus almost decisive in their character. Reflecting on the outcome of World War I, and an ominous future.

People who feared IBM were wrong, ... Technology is ever-changing.

For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.

We tend to credit those who create an idea, not those who perfect it, forgetting that it is often only in the perfection of an idea that true progress occurs. Putting sixty-four transistors on a chip allowed people to dream of the future. Putting four million transistors on a chip actually gave them the future.