Lawrence M. Krauss Quotes

There is only one thing worse than one nation having the atomic bomb -- that's two nations having 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 will use nuclear weapons whenever it serves our vital interests.

Long before the terrifying potential of the arms race was recognized, there was a widespread instinctive abhorrence of nuclear weapons, and a strong desire to get rid of them.

And it raises a fundamental question: How long can we move the world in one direction while we move in another direction, and do we want to backslide into an era that we finally emerged from where we had a nuclear weapon for every tactical mission?

The nuclear weapon is obsolete. I want to get rid of them all.

Limiting nuclear war is like limiting the mission of a match thrown in a keg of gunpowder.

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

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

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

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

Nuclear weapons are the greatest national security risk to the United States, and they are the most important weapons in our arsenal.

The fewer nuclear weapons possessed by the fewest countries is safer, not only because of the possibility of a nuclear accident but also a nuclear war.

Maintaining a U. S. Nuclear Arsenal presents only one benefit today: deterring the use of nuclear weapons by others. Thus, there is simply no reason for nuclear weapons to play a central role in U. S. Defense Policy any longer.

It is hard to seriously suggest that from a national-security standpoint, 1,000 warheads are not enough to protect the United States. Such an arsenal is literally overkill, sufficient to destroy every major population center on the planet outside of our borders.

Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.

Nuclear disarmament is one of the greatest legacies we can pass on to future generations.

We still live in a world where if you have nuclear weapons, you are buying power; you are buying insurance against attack.

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

The days are gone forever when our enemies could blackmail us with nuclear bombs.

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.

So I ask the nuclear powers to abandon the out-of-date thinking of the Cold War period and take a fresh look. Above all, I appeal to them to bear in mind the long-term threat that nuclear weapons pose to humankind and to begin action towards their elimination.

For the United States to recommit itself to the obligation that we undertook in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that many other states undertook, which was to work towards disarmament and the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons, is something that manifestly serves our national security interests.

To sum up, there is no evidence that a world without nuclear weapons would be a dangerous world. On the contrary, it would be a safer world, as I will show later.