Carl Sagan Quotes

I'm still bothered by the threat of nuclear war.

Nuclear war is such an emotional subject that many people see the weapons themselves as the common enemy of humanity.

Limiting nuclear war is like limiting the mission of a match thrown in a keg of gunpowder.

A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.

I remember fear and I remember the potential of nuclear war.

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 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.

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.

Long before the terrifying potential of the arms race was recognized, there was a widespread instinctive abhorrence of nuclear weapons, and a strong desire to get rid of them.

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.

The present basic philosophy is nuclear deterrence.

This means that the only function of nuclear weapons, while they exist, is to deter a nuclear attack.

The atomic bomb means the end of world war.

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

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 say in all sincerity that the nuclear arms race has no military purpose. Wars cannot be fought with nuclear weapons; their existence only adds to our perils because of the illusions which they have generated.

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

The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available. ... Therefore, we must expect that if another war — a serious war — breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form.

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

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.

I have a little hope that the nuclear holocaust doesn't happen.

We could still have continued the arms race, but the arms race was pointless, and it was another reason we decided to start perestroika. It was senseless to continue to accumulate weapons. We had enough weapons to destroy life on Earth 1,000 times, and therefore it was very clear to us that the arms race could spiral out of control. A conflict could have started, as both the Americans and the Soviets realized, not out of a wrong political decision but because of a failure in the command-and-control systems.

Generation after generation can't just be loaded with more and more nuclear weapons and not ultimately dance to that music.

Making bombs will only destroy us. It doesn't matter whether we use them or not. They will destroy us either way.