William Daniel Leahy Quotes

I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new-one which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use. That new language is the language of atomic warfare.

The real abhorrent consequence of the invention of atomic bombs is the fact that we still have them and they're spreading.

Nut With A Nuke

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

Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.

Second point is no one here could predict or know that Israel was involved or started producing the hydrogen bomb - the most advanced and powerful atomic bomb that can kill millions of people.

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

I think all of you know there is no adequate defense against massive nuclear attack.

My guess is that nuclear weapons will be used sometime in the next hundred years, but that their use is much more likely to be small and limited than widespread and unconstrained.

We still live with this unbelievable threat over our heads of nuclear war. I mean, are we stupid? Do we think that the nuclear threat has gone, that the nuclear destruction of the planet is not imminent? It's a delusion to think it's gone away.

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

The first use of the nuclear weapon gives a great advantage to the user.

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

Don’t you realize that the Federal Government has the atomic bomb.

Nuclear weapons are the greatest national security risk to the United States, and they are the most important weapons in our arsenal.

The atomic bomb was the turn of the screw. It has made the prospect of future war unendurable.

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

Nuclear proliferation has never entirely been brought under control, and the arsenals of nuclear powers contain bombs far more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

For me, one of the big things I really worried about a lot was nuclear war growing up.

Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.

I have to bring to your notice a terrifying reality: with the development of nuclear weapons Man has acquired, for the first time in history, the technical means to destroy the whole of civilization in a single act.

I think there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. However, the public opinion in this country and throughout the world throw up their hands in horror when you mention nuclear weapons, just because of the propaganda that's been fed to them.

The most dangerous thing Iraq could have ever had was a nuclear weapon. The nuclear weapon Iraq was trying to build was not deliverable by bomb or ballistic missile. It was a large, bulky device that they hoped to bury and set off to let the world know they had a nuclear weapon. They never achieved that.

We were fortunate to have the Russians as our childhood enemies. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they had the temerity to drop a nuclear weapon.

Even with the best intentions, you can have a nuclear war, a nuclear holocaust, through miscalculation, through accidents.