Daniel Ellsberg Quotes

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.

I think one country with nuclear weapons is one country too many.

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.

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.

The nuclear weapon is obsolete.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

A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.

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

We can do better than condone a world in which nuclear weapons are accepted as commonplace.

This diffusion of nuclear weapons is terrible…terrible. Imagine a world with a large number of states with nuclear bombs.

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.

Nuclear weapons exist. They probably always will. And they work, with horrible efficiency. They threaten the very future of our species. We have no choice but to manage that risk. Never again can we put the task out of our minds; nor trivialize it; nor make it routine.

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

I've been working with Global Zero. They are a great organization leading the resistance against nuclear war and the elimination of nuclear weapons.

We don't need another nuclear arms race to proceed a pace and then to encourage other countries to become very, to develop these kinds of capabilities also. This is not what we need.

People tend to forget about nuclear weapons. We think they are going to remain in silos for the rest of time. As long as they exist, they are going to be used.

We could still have continued the arms race, but the arms race was pointless, and it was another reason we decided to start perestroika. It was senseless to continue to accumulate weapons. We had enough weapons to destroy life on Earth 1,000 times, and therefore it was very clear to us that the arms race could spiral out of control. A conflict could have started, as both the Americans and the Soviets realized, not out of a wrong political decision but because of a failure in the command-and-control systems.

I can't believe that this world can go on beyond our generation and on down to succeeding generations with this kind of weapon on both sides poised at each other without someday some fool or some maniac or some accident triggering the kind of war that is the end of the line for all of us. And I just think of what a sigh of relief would go up from everyone on this earth if someday-and this is what I have-my hope, way in the back of my head-is that if we start down the road to reduction, maybe one day in doing that, somebody will say, 'Why not all the way? Let's get rid of all these things'.

We have missiles - nuclear missiles - on hair-trigger alert. We should be in the business of nuclear disarmament right now, which neither of these candidates [Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton] are talking about.

Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet.

Our immediate striving must be aimed at preventing what, in the present situation, is the greatest threat to the very survival of mankind, the nuclear threat.

The salvation of the world ultimately lies in moving towards universal nuclear disarmament, but that's a long distance away.

I think that once the nuclear alternative happens, it's over. At the same time, we have to be prepared.

As long as nuclear weapons exist, the chances of survival of the human species are quite slight.

A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?

Nuclear is the single greatest threat.