John Kerry Quotes

In the spirit of commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, we will strive to achieve real progress in disarmament and arms control.

Advances in weaponry go much faster than arms control.

Disarment ... is a continuing imperative.

Here's the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn't have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America.

It is not viable for one country to demand a right to increase and upgrade its nuclear weapons capabilities while asking others to eliminate theirs.

Everyone knows that Israel has nuclear weapons, but no one is talking about it. The world doesn't want nuclear weapons - not in Israel, not in the Middle East and not anywhere in the world.

I want to move to a world of no nuclear weapons but I want to do that through multilateral disarmament so that we all disarm together.

It has become impossible to give up the enterprise of disarmament without abandoning the whole great adventure of building up a collective peace system.

We must eliminate all nuclear weapons in order to eliminate the grave risk they pose to our world. This will require persistent efforts by all countries and peoples. A nuclear war would affect everyone, and all have a stake in preventing this nightmare.

If we had made it clear from the very beginning that we were not going to tolerate another nuclear power on the face of the earth, and had done it in Korea, where we could have accomplished it militarily, if necessary, I would put a stop to it and would have put a stop to it there.

Sanctions aren't about weapons of mass destruction. People need to understand that.

India, Pakistan, China, Singapore and South Korea are heavily investing in nuclear arms. Since 21st century is the century of Asia, Asian countries should be the first ones to drop this arms race.

Nobody wants any country to have nuclear weapons.

One cannot abolish only a single weapon, but only war as a whole.

It is the ultimate end of absurdity for the arms race to go on.

Talking to the superpowers about disarmament is like talking to drug dealers about stopping drug deliveries.

I saw our bombs as political resources for peace.

War, which remains an anomaly in a civilized world, has taken on so devastating and universal a character...that every thought and every effort should be aimed, above all, at making it impossible.

In the age when the atom has been split, the moon encircled, diseases conquered, is disarmament so difficult a matter that it must remain a distant dream? To answer, yes, is to despair for the future of mankind.

Moral disarmament is to safeguard the future; material disarmament is to save for the present, that there may be a future to safeguard.

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.

Today we are rightly in an era of disarmament and dismantlement of nuclear weapons. But in some countries nuclear weapons development still continues. Whether and when the various Nations of the World can agree to stop this is uncertain. But individual scientists can still influence this process by withholding their skills., Accordingly, I call on all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work creating, developing, improving and manufacturing further nuclear weapons - and, for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons..

There is a widespread understanding among the people of this nation, and probably among the people of the world, that there is no safety except through the prevention of war.

If we had less statesmanship, we would get along with fewer battleships.

Free and open interchange of information across national borders as a prerequisite for U.S. disarmament talks with the Soviet Union.