Jerry Pournelle Quotes

If an SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) system were to keep out ninety percent of incoming nuclear missiles, it would be a ninety percent success and most Americans would be dead.

Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological nation plans for it.

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

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

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

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

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.

These missiles [Cruise and Pershing II] represent a new generation of missiles whose deployment will help give NATO first-strike capability. With this first-strike strategy, the West believes it could attack Russian military installations with such effectiveness that serious retaliation would be impossible.

The nuclear bomb is the most useless weapon ever invented. It can be employed to no rational purpose. It is not even an effective defense against itself.

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

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 atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

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

There is no direct evidence that nuclear weapons prevented a world war. Conversely, it is known that they nearly caused one.

The present basic philosophy is nuclear deterrence.

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.

The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available. ... Therefore, we must expect that if another war — a serious war — breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form.

Designing new low-yield nuclear weapons for limited strikes dangerously lowers the threshold for their use.

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!

I do not agree that South Korea needs to develop our own nuclear weapons or relocate tactical nuclear weapons in the face of North Korea's nuclear threat.

Here's why nuclear defense makes sense. And I know something about this. A missile can take an airplane out of the air. A better missile can take a missile out of the air.

The nightmare of the Cold War was nuclear weapons in the hands of an irrational person. I don't want to live through that nightmare.

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

That's a point that Dan Ellsberg has made for years. He said it's kind of like if you and I go into a grocery store to rob it, and I have a gun. The guy may give you the money in the cash register. I'm using the gun even if I don't shoot. Well that's nuclear weapons - essential to post-war deterrence - they cast a shadow over everything.