Charles Hill Quotes

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.

For decades, we and the Soviets have lived under the threat of mutual assured destruction; if either resorted to the use of nuclear weapons, the other could retaliate and destroy the one who had started it. Is there either logic or morality in believing that if one side threatens to kill tens of millions of our people, our only recourse is to threaten killing tens of millions of theirs?

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.

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

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.

When we're talking about technology that involves weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, there has to be an element of preemption.

As history since Hiroshima shows, the best, perhaps the only, way to curb war is to deter it with such overwhelming force as to turn it from a struggle into suicide.

For every security measure, there is a counter measure that breeds further insecurity. The acquisition by Pakistan or Iran of a nuclear capability neutralizes the security achieved by Israel’s own nuclear capability. Non-governmental terrorism neutralizes governmental military superiority. Chemical weapons neutralize the security of cement walls.

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.

If the [present] deterrent is the mutual annihilation of each other ..., what else do we need and why?

We do not believe that a nuclear war should be fought and we do not believe that a nuclear war can be won.

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.

The only use for an atomic bomb is to keep somebody else from using one.

Nuclear weapons are infinitely less important in our foreign policy than they were in the days of the Cold War. I don't think we need nuclear weapons any longer.

We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction, yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them for security - and indeed to continue to refine their capacities and postulate plans for their use.

The present basic philosophy is nuclear deterrence.

And I have lived since - as you have - in a period of cold war, during which we have ensured by our achievements in the science and technology of destruction that a third act in this tragedy of war will result in the peace of extinction.

Nuclear weapons are intrinsically neither moral nor immoral, though they are more prone to immoral use than most weapons.

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.

If a nuclear power is willing to be bolder than another, it can take limited conventional actions without fear of major pushback.

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.

The presence of these large, long-range, and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass-destruction—constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas...

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

The way to win an atomic war is to make sure it never starts.