Mao Zedong Quotes

The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.

The atom bomb was no 'great decision.' It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.

I would not recommend the use of any atomic weapon, no matter how small, when both sides have the power to destroy the world.

The nuclear threat is a direct product of the cult of force that has dominated the world for centuries.

The moral high ground in taking the first hit before attacking has been made obsolete by weapons of mass destruction….You cannot wait for a catastrophic event.

Nuclear weapons are only good for deterring. It is insane that two men, sitting on opposite ends of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization.

The decision to use the atom bomb on Japanese cities, and the consequent buildup of enormous nuclear arsenals, was made by governments, on the basis of political and military perceptions.

Science has produced such powerful weapons that in a war between great powers there would be neither victor nor vanquished. Both would be overwhelmed in destruction.

The lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis is plain: Strength prevents war; weakness invites it. We need a commander-in-chief who understands that - and who won't leave us facing a foe who thinks he doesn't.

Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies, upped the stakes.

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

I do not regard the atomic bomb as a new weapon merely, but as a revolutionary change in the relations of man in the universe.

Nuclear weapons are what make us a great power.

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.

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

There is only one thing worse than one nation having the atomic bomb -- that's two nations having it.

We ought to nuke North Korea right about now just to give the world a warning.

I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks!

I would like to see invented a substance or a machine with such terrible power of mass destruction that war would thereby be made impossible forever.

In the real world of real political leaders a decision that would bring even one hydrogen bomb on one city of one's own country would be recognized as a catastrophic blunder.

I know there is no present evidence, and I think there is no present likelihood that the Cubans and the Cuban Government and the Soviet Government would in combination attempt to install major offensive capability.

Cuba does not have nuclear rockets but it does have moral rockets.

How is it possible for free institutions to flourish, or even maintain themselves, in a situation where defenses, civil and military, must be ceaselessly poised to meet an attack that might incinerate fifty million Americans—not in the space of an evening, but in the space of moments.

The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. We were the first to have this weapon in our possession, and the first to use it. There is a practical certainty that potential enemies will have it in the future and that atomic bombs will sometime be used against us.

All the time one keeps on thinking of this bomb, and what it may make the future look like. A perpetual menace over everything but may be as salutary as hell fire was in its time.