Joseph R. Biden Jr. 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.

The notion that our only strategic choice is MAD (mutually assured destruction)—which means nothing less than an unstable pact to commit instant and total mutual suicide in the event of war—is irrational, immoral and unnecessary.

National missile defense has become a question of theology, not policy.

The talk about balance, nuclear balance, seems to me to be metaphysical and doesn't seem to be real at all.

The trick in nuclear strategy is to maintain stability by balancing potentials and thus to discourage events from converting the hypothetical to the actual.

The best reduction, the most final reduction, is to destroy the warheads.

We still need to be conscious of the fact that Russia has intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The chief task was to stop the arms race before it brought utter disaster. However, after the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, any rationale for having nuclear weapons disappeared.

We have a moral imperative to keep up the search for something better than mutual assured destruction.

The atomic clock ticks faster and faster. We may anticipate a state of affairs in which the Great Powers will each be in a position to put an end to the civilization and life of the other, though not without risking its own. We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other but only at risk of his own life.

Mutually assured destruction.

With the new weapons like the atom bomb, Russia would have it, too, and use it first. It is a very difficult world. But that trouble is imminent is obvious.

We are plunging headlong into a cold war, and we have 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.

It is absolutely right that President Reagan considers SDI and thank goodness people considered nuclear research before the last war.

The barn doors are open, and the horses are running out because we've got guns all over the place. It's basically a cold war for individuals: you've got a nuclear bomb, and I've got a nuclear bomb, and the only thing stopping us from using them is the fact we both have them.

If we made atomic bombs, we would bring about a terrible change in the world. Who knows what would happen from this?

Nuclear weapons present us with a paradox: We spend billions of dollars building and maintaining them in the hope that we never have to use them.

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!

To me, nuclear weapons are the secret crisis of our time. Frankly, everyone needs to reread John Hersey's 'Hiroshima.'

I remember very vividly, as a child growing up in England, living through the Cuban Missile Crisis. For a few days, the entire biosphere seemed to be on the verge of destruction. And the same weapons are still here, and they're still armed. If we avoid that trap, others are waiting for us.

Reagan's defense buildup and SDI, so ridiculed at the time, pressed Gorbachev, while his economy was collapsing, to make arms deals and improve relations with the West, which contributed to the unraveling of his empire.

Ever since Hiroshima, we've been faced with the depressing fact that you cannot un-invent something.

We are the first species capable of self-annihilation.

If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and of Hiroshima.

The sole purpose of nuclear weapons must be to deter their use by others.