Noam Chomsky Quotes

The Cold War philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which prevented the former Soviet Union and the United States from using the nuclear weapons they had targeted at each other, would not apply to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran. For him (Ahmadinejad), Mutual Assured Destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement.

I think Donald Trump is very, very cautious about nuclear weapons, and he's seriously concerned. And this might be one of the reasons he wants to deal with Putin carefully, because he's aware of how many nuclear weapons Putin has, and that Russian doctrine is much more open about using nuclear weapons than is American doctrine.

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.

The Obama administration has revealed the size of America's nuclear arsenal. We have 1,000 warheads aimed at China, 1,000 aimed at Russia, and the rest aimed at Fox News.

If in the words which the Secretary of State has just used, the use of a nuclear weapon is to be avoided 'at all costs'. what is the point of having one?

Teller contended, not implausibly, that hydrogen bombs keep the peace, or at least prevent thermonuclear war, because the consequences of warfare between nuclear powers are now too dangerous. We haven't had a nuclear war yet, have we? But all such arguments assume that the nuclear-armed nations are and always will be, without exception, rational actors, and that bouts of anger and revenge and madness will never overtake their leaders (or military and secret police officers in charge of nuclear weapons). In the century of Hitler and Stalin, this seems ingenuous.

Mr. President, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.

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

We are categorically against proliferation of nuclear weapons.

We have a chance to wind down and expedite the removal of 96 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. What an achievement it would be, if at the end of the next administration, we could say that the nuclear arsenals of both Russia and the United States had been reduced to the barest minimums.

You can’t go making new nuclear weapons and talk to the rest of the world about giving them up.

Our republic is a responsible nuclear state that, as we made clear before, will not use nuclear weapons first unless aggressive hostile forces use nuclear weapons to invade on our sovereignty.

The truth emerging from this scattered picture of nuclear proliferation is simple: there is a stronger chance of a nuclear bomb being used now than at almost any point in the Cold War.

Donald Trump believes that the world will be safer if more nations have nuclear weapons. And he's said Saudi Arabia should get them, Japan should get them, Korea should get them. And when he was confronted with this, and told, wait a minute, terrorists could get those, proliferation could lead to nuclear war, here's what Donald Trump said, and I quote: "Go ahead, folks, enjoy yourselves."

If you read people like say Bruce Blair one of the leading, most sober, knowledgeable specialists, he says, look, [Donald Trump] statements are all over the map, but his personality is frightening, he's a complete megalomaniac.

America was good enough to make a small compact lighter weight nuclear weapon. The Russians still had these big clunky heavy ones, so they had to build the big boosters in the arm's war, so now all of the sudden Russia could take off the shelf and put into orbit much heavier things than we could, so that's why they had the original leadership.

We call upon the nuclear-weapon states to immediately cease their plans to further invest in modernizing and extending the life span of their nuclear weapons and related facilities.

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.

With regard to nuclear weapons, it's kind of hard to say. [Donald Trump] is said lots of things. The national security experts are terrified. But they're more terrified by his personality than by his statements.

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.

I would characterize current US nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous

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

It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness.

The catch word is equilibrium again, informed the field what are conventional weapons or nuclear weapons of different qualities. You cannot make up for a actual or perceived disequilibrium in the conventional field by having more nuclear weapons.

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.